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HELEN KELLER:
HER SOCIALIST YEARS
Edited, with an introduction,
by Philip S. Foner
The whole world has long admired the
courageous life of Helen Keller, the deaf,
mute, and blind girl who rose from despair
and frustration to become one of Amer-
ica's great women of letters and an in-
spiration to millions around the world. In
recent years, a number of books, movies,
and plays have celebrated Helen Keller's
story, with its magnificent heroism and
humanism.
But the recent portraits have overlooked
a major period of her life, the dozen years
when she was a crusading socialist. In this
volume. Dr. Philip S. Foner, the noted
American labor historian, restores that
part of Helen Keller's life to our literature.
This collection of her political and social
writings and speeches includes her argu-
ments for women's suffrage, her defense
of the Industrial Workers of the World
(Wobblies), her opposition to World War
I, her views on birth control, her support
for the Socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs,
her pleas on behalf of the unemployed and
labor movement, her defense of the new-
born Soviet Union, and her eulogy of its
leader, V. I. Lenin.
Here is "the poor deaf and blind, girl,"
Helen Keller, speaking and writing as a
champion of the poor and oppressed in
their struggle against "industrial deafness"
and "social blindness."
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HELEN KELLER
Her Socialist Years
BY PHILIP S. FONER
History of the Labor Movement in the United States Volume I:
From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Fed-
eration of Labor Volume II: From the Founding of the
American Federation of Labor to the Emergence of American
Imperialism Volume III: The Policies and Practices of the
American Federation of Labor, 1900-1909 Volume IV: The
Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917
A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States (2
vols.)
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass {4 vols.)
The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (2 vols.)
Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irre-
pressible Conflict
The Fur and Leather Workers Union
Jack London: American Rebel
Mark Twain: Social Critic
The Jews in American History; 1654-1865
The Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson
The Selected Writing of George Washington
The Selected Writings of Abraham Lincoln
The Selected Writings of Franklin D. Roosevelt
The Letters of Joe Hill
The Case of Joe Hill
The Bolshevik Revolution: Its Impact on the American Radical
and Labor Movements, 1917-1921
HELEN KELLER
Her Socialist Years
WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
Philip S. Foner
Professor of History, Lincoln University
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
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Copyright © 1967, by International Publishers Co., Inc.
First Edition
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-13214
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction, by Philip S. Foner 7
How I Became a Socialist 21
In Defense of Fred Warren 27
Social Causes of Blindness 29
To an English Woman-Suffragist 31
The Unemployed 34
To the Strikers at Little Falls, New York 37
The Hand of the World 38
A Call for Harmony 46
Why President Wilson Must Fail 48
To the Editor of the New York Evening Sun 50
A New Light is Coming 52
New Vision for the Blind 55
Brutal Treatment of the Unemployed in Sacramento 57
Introduction to Arrows in the Gale, Poems by
Arturo Giovannitti 58
Why Men Need Woman Suffrage 64
To President Woodrow Wilson: Joe Hill 69
Birth Control 70
The Ford Peace Plan is Doomed to Failure 72
Menace of the Militarist Program 73
Strike Against War 75
Why I Became an IWW 82
To the New York Call 86
The New Woman's Party 87
To Morris Hillquit 89
What is the IWW? 91
In Behalf of the IWW 94
To Eugene V. Debs 98
End the Blockade of Soviet Russia 100
To President Woodrow Wilson: Blockade of Russia 103
6 Contents
A Plea for the Recognition of Soviet Russia 104
Onward, Comradesl 107
Help Soviet Russia 109
The Rand School HI
To Senator Robert M. La Follette 113
The Only Kind of War I Believe In 116
The Spirit of Lenin 118
Notes 120
Introduction
by Philip S. Foner
Almost everyone knows that Helen Keller was stricken as
an infant by a disease that left her deaf, blind and mute; that
she was brought out of her prison of despair and frustration
by Anne Sullivan, and that she triumphed over her disabili-
ties and made her life an inspiration to the entire world. But
very few persons know that Helen Keller was for a time one
of the best known figures in the American Socialist move-
ment, a champion of the working class and of its struggles
against industrial barbarism, a consistent foe of militarism
and war, and a militant crusader for a new society. Turning
the yellowing pages of radical newspapers and magazines
from 1910 to the early 1920's, one frequently finds the name
Helen Keller beneath speeches, articles, and letters dealing
with major social questions of the era. The vision which runs
through most of these writings is the vision of socialism. In
the New York Callj daily organ of the Socialist Party, Hattie
Schlossberg wrote on May 4, 1913:
"Helen Keller is our Comrade, and her socialism is a liv-
ing, vital thing to her. All her speeches are permeated with
the spirit of socialism. . . .
"If ever there was a superwoman that woman is Helen
Keller. By her indomitable will she wrought a miracle, and
when one ponders over her achievements, the brain is dazzled
by the possibilities of the human mind. To us Socialist Helen
Keller ought to be doubly precious, for she is our Comrade —
let us glory in that."
Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia,
Alabama. Her father. Captain Arthur H. Keller, formerly
a Confederate officer, was publisher of the North Alabamian.
Her mother, Kate Adams, 20 years younger than her hus-
band, had come South from Massachusetts. Kate Adams'
family included both a brigadier-general in the Confederate
7
8 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Army and Edward Everett, who shared the platform with
Lincoln at Gettysburg.
All that Helen Keller ever remembered of the little town
of Tuscumbia, with its two thousand inhabitants, was a
glimpse of "broad green fields, luminous sky, trees and
flowers." When she was barely 19 months old, she came down
with a high fever. It appeared to be only a brief illness. But
after it she was never to hear or see again. She was, as she
described herself, "a phantom living in a no-world."
It was Alexander Graham Bell who gave the Kellers hope
for their stricken child after doctors had declared her a hope-
less case, doomed to live out her life in silence and darkness
without participating in the society around her. Dr. Bell,
whose mother and wife were both deaf and who had invented
the telephone largely to assist the deaf to hear sounds, sug-
gested to the Kellers that they write to the Perkins Institu-
tion, the famous training school for the blind in Boston, and
ask about a teacher for their daughter. It was at Perkins
Institution that the deaf-blind child, Laura Bridgman, under
the guidance of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, had learned to
communicate with others, an achievement which Charles
Dickens had described in his American Notes.
Michael Anagonos, Dr. Howe's successor at the Perkins
Institution, received the request from the Kellers for a
teacher, and chose Anne Sullivan. Miss Sullivan, who was
herself half-blind when she entered Perkins, had studied for
six years at the Institution. Upon her graduation, though
doubting her ability, she began a life devoted to the service
of the deaf-blind.
Miss Sullivan arrived at Tuscumbia on March 3, 1887.
Then began a series of battles between Miss Sullivan and the
young Helen Keller until Teacher (as Helen always called
her) transformed a child who looked and acted like a little
savage into a gentle, gay, radiant personality, eager to learn
to spell words. The world has come to know this story
through the splendid play and movie, "The Miracle
Worker." But Miss Sullivan's accomplishments were not a
miracle. They were the result of courage, determination,
Introduction 9
inspiration, talents, and common sense. Of course, it was her
pupil's own determination to learn and her remarkable
powers and growing mind that made possible the astounding
results of this famous relationship.
After the celebrated experience at the pump where Miss
Sullivan let water run onto Helen's hands and, through the
manual alphabet,* spelled the word "water" until the con-
nection was made, the pupil learned more and more words,
read a great deal, sj>elling out the words with her hands, and
then learned to write. At Perkins Institution, where she went
for organized classroom study, she spoke to children in the
language of the manual alphabet. Then, studying with
Sarah Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School for the
Deaf in Boston, she learned to speak. At the age of ten, Helen
Keller was able to read, write and, even though she could
not speak clearly,f she could tell Teacher, "I am not dumb
now."
As the news spread of the deaf-blind girl's achievements —
she learned German, Latin, Greek and French — Helen Kel-
ler became a world celebrity. Her decision to go to college,
Radcliffe College in fact, was a leading news event of the
day. With funds supplied through a campaign initiated by
Mark Twain, an admirer and friend, Helen Keller entered
Radcliffe in 1900 at the age of twenty. Teacher sat next to
her in classes, reporting the lectures to Helen with her hands.
She also read books to Helen five hours or more a day until
an ophthalmologist warned Miss Sullivan to rest her eyes or
else run the risk of permanent blindness.
In 1904 Helen Keller graduated cum laude. She had al-
ready published two books: The first issued in 1902, The
Story of My Life, immediately became a best-seller and was
* The manual alphabet had been invented by Trappist monks in Spain
who had taken a vow of silence.
t Hattie Schlossberg, who heard Helen Keller speak in 1913, wrote: "I was
not prepared for what did come. The effect of her first words was startling.
Her voice is indescribable. It seems to come from somewhere in the depths
of her. It sounds weird and uncanny at first, but this feeling passes away as
soon as one gets accustomed to the tone. I did not experience this sensation
of hoUowness at all when I heard her the second time." (New York Call,
May 4, 1913.)
10 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
to be published in about 50 languages; the second, written in
her final year at Radcliffe, was called Optimism. She was also
by now a frequent contributor to magazines, receiving a
good fee for her articles. Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
settled in Wrentham, Massachusetts, about 26 miles from
Boston. To the old farmhouse which they purchased came
many of their friends, among them John Macy, a young
Harvard instructor who had helped Helen organize and edit
The Story of My Life, and had learned the manual alphabet
in order to be able to talk to her. In 1901 Macy had joined
the staff of the Youth's Companion, and remained as associate
editor for eight years. He was a brilliant writer and critic,
interested in the social issues of the day.
On May 2, 1905, Macy and Anne Sullivan were married.
It was agreed beforehand that the three — Helen, Anne and
Macy — would live together so that if anything happened to
Anne, he would take care of Helen. As a member of the
household, Macy became an important part of Helen's life.
Although he did not become a member of the Socialist Party
until 1909, Macy was already filled with anger over "the
asininities of the present system."* He had a great sympathy
for the organized efforts of the workers to change their de-
graded status, and passionate hatred of the slum conditions
in which most workers were forced to live.
Helen Keller had already begun to do some thinking along
the same lines. She had walked with Anne Sullivan through
industrial slums and had been appalled to learn that whole
families were crowded in hideous, sunless tenements, that
children were sent to work in mills from the age of six, and
that so many working-class households lived on the very edge
of starvation. Her special interest in the blind made her
aware that it was not mere accident that caused the wide
incidence of blindness, especially among workers and their
children. She discovered that "too much of it was traceable
to wrong industrial conditions and greed of employers. And
• In 1916 Macy published Socialism in America in which he announced: "I
am a member of the Socialist Party and of the Industrial Workers of the
World, but I have no official position in either." (p. ix.)
Introduction 1 1
the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty
drove women to the life of shame that ended in blindness."
Helen Keller learned nothing at college that deepened her
understanding of why these conditions prevailed. "Schools
seem to love the dead past and live in it," she declared years
later. "They [the teachers] did not teach me about things as
they are today, or about the vital problems of the people."
In February, 1908, the Macmillan Company of New York
published H. G. Wells' New Worlds for Old. Anne Sullivan
read it, and while she was not convinced by Wells' arguments
in favor of socialism, she thought that Helen would find the
book interesting because of its "imaginative quality" and
"electric style." Helen found the book more than just in-
teresting. Wells, who described himself as "a socialist, but . . .
by no means fanatical or uncritical adherent," depicted in
detail the wretched condition of working-class children under
capitalism who "grow up through a darkened, joyless child-
hood into a gray, perplexing, hopeless world that beats them
down at last, after servility, after toil, after crime it may be
and despair, to death." He described, too, the plight of
workers who toiled "for a bare subsistence all their lives."
The socialist asked a basic question: "What freedom is there
today for the vast majority of mankind?" He answered:
"They are free to do nothing but work for a bare subsistence
all their lives, they may not go freely about the earth even,
but are prosecuted for trespassing upon the health-giving
breast of our universal mother."
Socialism alone, Wells argued, could solve these problems.
"Socialism lights up certain once hopeless evils in human
ajffairs and shows the path by which escape is possible." It
would certainly solve the inferior, degraded status of women
in the male-dominated capitalist society. "The socialist would
end that old predominance altogether. The woman, he de-
clares, must be as important and responsible a citizen in the
state as the man. She must cease to be in any sense or degree
private property."
All this made sense to Helen Keller. It offered an explana-
12 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
tion for the social evils of her day and a logical solution.*
Moreover, Wells pointed out the role she herself could play
in the movement for a new and better society. "Over and
above the propaganda of its main constructive ideas and
their more obvious and practical application," he wrote, "an
immense amount of intellectual work remains to be done
for socialism. The battle for socialism is to be fought not
simply at the polls and in the market place, but at the writing
desk and in the study." Helen Keller could use her pen and
her voice for the cause even though she could not participate
in day-to-day activities.
Once introduced to socialism, Helen Keller determined
to read all she could on the subject. Macy, at her request,
fed her book after book from his library, and she read Marx,
Engels and Kautsky. She obtained Socialist periodicals from
Germany printed in braille for the blind, and Value, Price
and Profit by Karl Marx from England. A friend read to her
the contents of American Socialist publications which were
not yet printed in braille.
In 1909 Helen Keller joined the Socialist Party in Mas-
sachusetts. (She was to be made honorary member of many
Socialist locals throughout the country.) Although a letter
from her appeared in the Socialist weekly, Appeal to Reason,
in December 1910, the fact that she endorsed the Socialist
movement did not become public knowledge until early in
1912. On February 10, 1912, the Cleveland Citizen, a Social-
ist weekly, carried the following announcement:
"Of the thousands of telegrams and letters that have
poured into Berlin congratulating the Socialists upon their
splendid victory in recent elections, none created a more
profound impression than a letter from Helen Keller, the
famous deaf, dumb and blind woman of Wrentham, Mass.,
who wrote to the New Times of Berlin, and in subscribing
for that paper declared that she was heartily in accord with
the Socialist movement and hoped that a Socialist paper for
the blind would be started."
• Later Helen Keller viewed Wells' book as a rather weak presentation of
the principles of socialism, but she always acknowledged its importance in
introducing her to the movement.
Introduction 1 3
The story was picked up by the commercial press and soon
the name Helen Keller and socialism were being linked to-
gether. Then on July 6, 1912, the Cleveland Citizen re-
ported: "Helen Keller, the famous blind and deaf author,
has been appointed by Mayor Lunn of Schenectady, New
York, as a member of his cabinet. Miss Keller has been an
enthusiastic Socialist for several years." Lunn was the Social-
ist Mayor of Schenectady, and even though the report of
Helen Keller's appointment proved to be premature, the
fact that she had been "an enthusiastic Socialist for several
years" was prominently featured in the press.
In an editorial entitled, "Helen Keller and Socialism," the
Cleveland Socialist of October 5, 1912 noted:
"The value of such an adherent to the cause of Socialism,
lies to no small extent in the fact that its opponents, after ad-
mitting the wonderful intellectual development of Miss Keller
and insisting for years upon her marvelous intelligence, can-
not possibly attribute her Socialist ideas to ignorance, stu-
pidity, viciousness, envy or maliciousness of character, quali-
ties which are often made the explanation of Socialism in the
case of individuals possessed of all the normal senses. They
may not admit directly that her Socialism is the result of her
high intelligence, but they cannot as directly deny it. On the
other hand, the Socialists may with justice make the claim,
without any fear whatever of a reasonable objection."
The opponents of Socialism, however, used a different ap-
proach.
Editorials charged the Socialists with using a poor blind
and deaf girl for her prestige value. In reply, Helen Keller
wrote "How I Became a Socialist" (published in the New
York Call of November 3, 1912) in which she told of her
conversion to Socialism. And she was proud to be a Socialist!
"I am no worshipper of cloth of any color, but I love the red
flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists. I have
a red flag hanging in my study."
The charge that the "poor deaf and blind Helen Keller"
was being exploited by the advocates of social change was
always met head-on by Miss Keller. She put it effectively in
her letter to Senator Robert M. La Follette in announcing
14 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
her support for his presidential candidacy in 1924 on the
Farmer-Labor ticket:
"So long as I confine my activities to social service and the
blind, they [the newspapers] compliment me extravagantly,
calling me 'archpriest of the sightless,' 'wonder woman' and
'a modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of
poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong eco-
nomics— that the industrial system under which we live is at
the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in
the world — that is a different matter. It is laudable to give
aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth
the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human
beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and
refinements of life, is an Utopian dream, and one who seri-
ously contemplates its realization must indeed be deaf, dumb
and blind."
On January I, 1911, the New York Call said of Helen Kel-
ler: "Her liberal views and wide sympathies ought to shame
those who have physical eyes, yet do not open them to the
sorrows that compass the mass of men." In the next decade
this viewpoint was to be increasingly heard. Helen Keller
spoke and wrote frequently in behalf of workers on strike.*
She defended the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
when the militant organization was under attack by anti-
labor employers and government officials, and, in the face
of nationwide hostility to the Wobblies, announced that she
was an "Industrialist," one of the names applied to the IWW.
She delivered sharp blows against militarism, and as the
United States was moving closer to entrance into World
War I, she spoke in the East and across the country against
further involvement in what she was convinced was an im-
perialist conflict. She questioned the sincerity of those who
• Helen Keller participated personally in the strike led by Actors Equity
in 1919. On August 18 she was to have appeared on the stage of the Lyric
Theatre in connection with the showing of the motion picture, "Deliverance,"
a highly imaginative film of her life. But since the actors were on strike, she
refused to appear and announced that she would "rather have the film fail
than aid the managers in their contest with the players." (New York Call,
August 18, 1919.) She marched with the strikers and spoke at their strike
meetings.
Introduction 1 5
claimed they were seeking to make the world safe for de-
mocracy while here in the United States, "Negroes may be
massacred and their property burned." When the country
was in the grip of wartime hysteria, she denounced military
conscription and hailed Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Social-
ist Party, as a true patriot for having dared to challenge the
warmarkers.
Of one thing Helen Keller was certain: socialism would
eventually triumph. "We must not lose our courage no mat-
ter how many powers are united against us," the New York
Call of February 6, 1913, quoted her as telling one of its
reporters. "We must keep battering at the stone wall of
ignorance and prejudice and mental blindness, breaking it
bit by bit, and eventually break it down." A year later, in
her preface to Arturo Giovannitti's poems, Arrows in the
Gale, she again affirmed this belief: "The seeds of the social-
ist movement are being scattered far and wide, and the power
does not exist in the world which can prevent their germina-
tion."
When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November
1917, Helen Keller felt that her faith was justified. She had
never been impressed by the argument of reformist socialists
that the way to achieve a socialist victory was by a peaceful,
piecemeal process, electing socialists to offices until the move-
ment could take control of the government. She had moved
close to the IWW precisely because she felt that the Socialist
Party, controlled by the reformists, was "sinking in the politi-
cal bosf" and because she could "not subscribe to a social
policy of small, immediate advantage." "Let us try revolution
and see what it will do now," she declared in 1916, Now a
year later, a proletarian revolution had come to Russia, and
to Helen Keller it seemed to be ushering in a new day for
all mankind. Speaking to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society
chapter at New York University in late November 1917, she
greeted the Bolshevik Revolution and welcomed "the revolu-
tionary forces at work at the present time." Three years later,
December 31, 1920, at New York's Madison Square Garden,
she declared:
16 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
"In the East a new star is risen! With pain and anguish the
Old Order has given birth to the New, and behold in the
East a man-child is born! Onward, comrades, all together!
Onward to the campfires of Russia! Onward to the Coming
Dawn!
"Through the night of our despair rings the keen call of
the New Day. All the powers of darkness could not still the
joy in faraway Moscow. Meteor-like through the heavens
flashed the golden words of light, 'Soviet Republic of Russia.'
Words sun-like — piercing the dark, joyous, radiant, love-
words banishing hate, bidding the teeming world of men to
awake and live! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to
the bright redeeming Dawn!"
When Helen Keller decided after 1921 that her chief life
work was to be devoted to raising funds for the American
Foundation for the Blind, her activities for the Socialist
movement diminished. She rarely spoke for the cause in public
after 1922, but in her private letters she revealed that her faith
remained firm. On November 10, 1923, she wrote to Art
Young, the great socially conscious artist and cartoonist: "Just
now the world is full of tragic premonitions. . . . Perhaps,
though, there is more hope in the situation than we think.
Under the turmoil and wreckage the Great Idea may be
hastening slowly, with circumspection and invincible tread.
May not Russia be the implement shaped by the ages to up-
root the jungle which we have made of the earth God gave us
to cultivate and to enjoy? Anyway, Russia has become a tower-
ing beacon to a world grappling with an unknown destiny. . . ."
In her autobiography, Mainstream: My Later Life, published
in 1929, she made it quite clear that she still retained her faith
in a future without war and poverty through socialism. Her
support of the working class remained as firm as ever. The New
York Times of November 13, 1931, reported her as telling a
meeting of Alabamans in New York's Hotel Astor: "Whenever
there is a strike it shows that men and women are over-
burdened by hardship. Only through organization can the
workers escape industrial slavery."
Introduction 17
It came as no surprise that the books of Helen Keller were
publicly burned by the Nazis in 1933!
When the Rand School of Social Science, the Socialist
Party's educational center in New York City, announced "A
Third of a Century Fund Drive," in 1940, Helen Keller was
among the first to respond. Her check was small, but it was
"none the less a token of the fervor that glows unquenchable
in my heart for mankind's liberation."
On March 10, 1940, upon receiving a copy of Art Young's
autobiography, Miss Keller wrote the author:* "We who be-
lieve in faithfulness unto the end honor you as a Comrade and
as an American artist who uses his gift to blast tyranny and op-
pression, . . .
"I could write pages about events and mutual friends that
are appealingly lighted up by your Art Young rays — Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, Giovannitti, Ettor
and other workers in the Mesabi Range strike.f . . . Nothing
matters so long as man's dauntless spirit and inventive brain
pushes society onward.
"There abides with me a gratifying sense that casting my lot
with the workers, even if only in dreams and sentiments, has
given symmetry and dignity to my womanhood and enabled
me to face unashamed the spiritual challenge which is quite
as searchingly fiery as the economic ordeal."
Helen Keller did not forget her past associates in the So-
cialist and labor movements, even during the terrifying, witch-
hunting years of McCarthyism. On July 24, 1957, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, the former IWW organizer who was now a
leader of the Communist Party, spent her 65th birthday in the
Federal Women's prison at Alderson, West Virginia, doing
her three years under the Smith Act. She was not allowed to
receive a letter from her old comrade in the radical movement,
Helen Keller, who wrote: "Loving birthday greetings, dear
* I wish to thank Mr. Lou Cohen of Argosy Bookshop (New York) for
furnishing me with Helen Keller's letters to Art Young.
t For a discussion of the strike of the iron ore miners of the Mesabi Range,
Minnesota in 1916, see Philip S. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World,
1905-1917, vol. IV, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, New
York, 1965, pp. 486-517.
18 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Elizabeth Flynn! May the sense of serving mankind bring
strength and peace into your brave heart."
As these words are written, Helen Keller lies near death's
door. Peace to the brave heart who served mankind so well.
JANUARY 1967
HELEN KELLER
Her Socialist Years
"The aim of all government should be to secure to the
workers as large a share as possible of the fruits of their toil.
For is it not labor that creates all things?"
FROM LETTER OF HELEN KELLER TO SENATOR ROBERT M. LA
FOLLETTE, AUGUST 1924
"Hellen Keller is blind, deaf and dumb, yet in her blindness
she sees oppression, in her deafness she hears the cry of out-
raged humanity, and in her speechlessness she voices the de-
mand for justice."
CLEVELAND PreSS REPRINTED IN FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS,
A Crime Without Name, pamphlet, January 30, 1911
How I Became a Socialist
For several months my name and socialism have appeared
often together in the newspapers. A friend tells me that I
have shared the front pages with baseball, Mr. Roosevelt and
the New York police scandal. The association does not make
me altogether happy but, on the whole, I am glad that many
people are interested in me and in the educational achieve-
ments of my teacher, Mrs. Macy. Even notoriety may be
turned to beneficent uses, and I rejoice if the disposition of
the newspapers to record my activities results in bringing
more often into their columns the word Socialism. In the
future I hope to write about socialism, and to justify in
some measure the great amount of publicity which has been
accorded to me and my opinions. So far I have written little
and said little about the subject. I have written a few letters,
notably one to Comrade Fred Warren which was printed in
the Appeal to Reason. I have talked to some reporters, one
of whom, Mr. Ireland of the New York World, made a very
flattering report and gave fully and fairly what I said. I have
never been in Schenectady. I have never met Mayor Lunn.^ I
have never had a letter from him, but he has sent kind mes-
sages to me through Mr. Macy. Owing to Mrs. Macy's illness,
whatever plans I had to join the workers in Schenectady
have been abandoned.
On such negative and relatively insignificant matters have
been written many editorials in the capitalist press and in
the Socialist press. The clippings fill a drawer. I have not
read a quarter of them, and I doubt if I shall ever read them
all. If on such a small quantity of fact so much comment
has followed, what will the newspapers do if I ever set to
work in earnest to write and talk in behalf of socialism? For
the present I should like to make a statement of my position
and correct some false reports and answer some criticisms
which seem to me unjust.
First — How did I become a Socialist? By reading. The first
21
22 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
book I read was Wells' New Worlds for Old. I read it on
Mrs. Macy's recommendation. She was attracted by its im-
aginative quality, and hoped that its electric style might
stimulate and interest me. When she gave me the book, she
was not a Socialist and she is not a Socialist now. Perhaps
she will be one before Mr. Macy and I are done arguing with
her.
Mr. Wells led to others. I asked for more books on the
subject, and Mr. Macy selected some from his library of
socialist literature. He did not urge them on me. He merely
complied with my request for more. I do not find him in-
clined to instruct me about socialism; indeed, I have often
complained to him that he did not talk to me about it as
much as I should like.
My reading has been limited and slow. I take German
bimonthly Socialist periodicals printed in braille for the
blind. (Our German comrades are ahead of us in many re-
spects.) I have also in German braille Kautsky's discussion
of the Erfurt Program.^ The other socialist literature that I
have read has been spelled into my hand by a friend who
comes three times a week to read to me whatever I choose to
have read. The periodical which I have most often requested
her lively fingers to communicate to my eager ones is the
National Socialist.^ She gives the titles of the articles and
I tell her when to read on and when to omit. I have also had
her read to me from the International Socialist Review
articles the titles of which sounded promising.^ Manual spell-
ing takes time. It is no easy and rapid thing to absorb
through one's fingers a book of 50,000 words on economics.
But it is a pleasure, and one which I shall enjoy repeatedly
until I have made myself acquainted with all the classic
socialist authors.
In the light of the foregoing I wish to comment on a piece
about me which was printed in the Common Cause and re-
printed in the Live Issue, two antisocialist publications. Here
is a quotation from that piece:
'Tor twenty-five years Miss Keller's teacher and constant
companion has been Mrs. John Macy, formerly of Wrentham,
How I Became a Socialist 23
Mass. Both Mr. and Mrs. Macy are enthusiastic Marxist
propagandists, and it is scarcely surprising that Miss Keller,
depending upon this lifelong friend for her most intimate
knowledge of life, should have imbibed such opinions."
Mr. Macy may be an enthusiastic Marxist propagandist,
though I am sorry to say he has not shown much enthusiasm
in propagating his Marxism through my fingers. Mrs. Macy
is not a Marxist, nor a socialist. Therefore what the Common
Cause says about her is not true. The editor must have in-
vented that, made it out of whole cloth, and if that is the
way his mind works, it is no wonder that he is opposed to
socialism. He has not sufficient sense of fact to be a socialist
or anything else intellectually worthwhile.
Consider another quotation from the same article. The
headline reads:
"SCHENECTADY REDS ARE ADVERTISING; USING HELEN KELLER,
THE BLIND GIRL, TO RECEIVE PUBLICITY."
Then the article begins:
"It would be difficult to imagine anything more pathetic
than the present exploitation of poor Helen Keller by the
Socialists of Schenectady. For weeks the party's press agencies
have heralded the fact that she is a Socialist, and is about to
become a member of Schenectady's new Board of Public
Welfare."
There's a chance for satirical comment on the phrase, "the
exploitation of poor Helen Keller." But I will refrain, simply
saying that I do not like the hypocritical sympathy of such
a paper as the Common Cause, but I am glad if it knows
what the word "exploitation" means.
Let us come to the facts. When Mayor Lunn heard that I
might go to Schenectady he proposed to the Board of Public
Welfare that a place be kept on it for me. Nothing was
printed about this in The Citizen, Mayor Lunn's paper. In-
deed, it was the intention of the board to say nothing about
the matter until after I had moved to Schenectady. But the
reporters of the capitalist press got wind of the plan, and one
day, during Mayor Lunn's absence from Schenectady, the
Knickerbocker Press of Albany made the announcement.
24 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
It was telegraphed all over the country, and then began the
real newspaper exploitation. By the Socialist press? No, by
the capitalist press. The Socialist papers printed the news,
and some o£ them wrote editorials of welcome. But The
Citizen, Mayor Lunn's paper, preserved silence and did not
mention my name during all the weeks when the reporters
were telephoning and telegraphing and asking for interviews.
It was the capitalist press that did the exploiting. Why? Be-
cause ordinary newspapers care anything about socialism?
No, of course not; they hate it. But because I, alas, am a
subject for newspaper gossip. We got so tired of denying that
I was in Schenectady that I began to dislike the reporter
who first published the "news."
The Socialist papers, it is true, did make a good deal of me
after the capitalist papers had "heralded the fact that I am a
Socialist." But all the reporters who came to see me were
from ordinary commercial newspapers. No Socialist paper,
neither The CaW nor the National Socialist ever asked me
for an article. The editor of The Citizen hinted to Mr. Macy
that he would like one, but he was too fine and considerate
to ask for it point-blank.
The New York Times did ask me for one. The editor of
the Times wrote assuring me that his paper was a valuable
medium for reaching the public and he wanted an article
from me. He also telegraphed asking me to send him an ac-
count of my plans and to outline my ideas of my duties as a
member of the Board of Public Welfare of Schenectady. I am
glad I did not comply with this request, for some days later
the Times made me a social outcast beyond the range of its
righteous sympathies. On September 21 there appeared in
the Times an editorial called "The Contemptible Red
Flag." I quote two passages from it:
"The flag is free. But it is none the less detestable. It is
the symbol of lawlessness and anarchy the world over, and as
such is held in contempt by all right-minded persons."
"The bearer of a red flag may not be molested by the
police until he commits some act which the red flag justifies.
He deserves, however, always to be regarded with suspicion.
How I Became a Socialist 25
By carrying the symbol of lawlessness he forfeits all right to
respect and sympathy."
I am no worshiper of cloth of any color, but I love the red
flag and what is symbolizes to me and other Socialists. I have
a red flag hanging in my study, and if I could I should gladly
march with it past the office of the Times and let all the re-
porters and photographers make the most of the spectacle.
According to the inclusive condemnation of the Times I have
forfeited all right to respect and sympathy, and I am to be
regarded with suspicion. Yet the editor of the Times wants
me to write him an article! How can he trust me to write
for him if I am a suspicious character? I hope you will enjoy
as much as I do the bad ethics, bad logic, bad manners that a
capitalist editor falls into when he tries to condemn the
movement which is aimed at his plutocratic interests. We
are not entitled to sympathy, yet some of us can write articles
that will help his paper to make money. Probably our opin-
ions have the same sort of value to him that he would find in
the confession of a famous murderer. We are not nice, but we
are interesting.
I like newspapermen. I have known many, and two or
three editors have been among my most intimate friends.
Moreover, the newspapers have been of great assistance in the
work which we have been trying to do for the blind. It costs
them nothing to give their aid to work for the blind and to
other superficial charities. But socialism — ah, that is a dif-
ferent matter! That goes to the root of all poverty and all
charity. The money power behind the newspapers is against
socialism, and the editors, obedient to the hand that feeds
them, will go to any length to put down socialism and under-
mine the influence of socialists.
When my letter to Comrade Fred Warren was published
in the Appeal to Reason, a friend of mine who writes a
special department for the Boston Transcript made an article
about it and the editor-in-chief cut it out.
The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism,
that Helen Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest
limitations of her development." Some years ago I met a
26 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway,
editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we
had in New York in behalf of the blind. At that time the
compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to
remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism
he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and
especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence
during the years since I met him. Surely it his turn to blush.
It may be that deafness and blindness incline one toward
socialism. Marx was probably stone deaf and William Morris
was blind. Morris painted his pictures by the sense of touch
and designed wall paper by the sense of smell.
Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! What an ungallant bird
it is! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system,
a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness
and deafness which we are trying to prevent. The Eagle is
willing to help us prevent misery provided, always provided,
that we do not attack the industrial tyranny which supports
it and stops its ears and clouds its vision. The Eagle and I are
at war. I hate the system which it represents, apologizes for
and upholds. When it fights back, let it fight fair. Let it at-
tack my ideas and oppose the aims and arguments of Social-
ism. It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me
and others that I cannot see or hear. I can read. I can read
all the socialist books I have time for in English, German
and French. If the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle should read
some of them, he might be a wiser man and make a better
newspaper. If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the
book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name
it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness.
NEW YORK Call, NOVEMBER 3, 1912
In Defense of Fred Warren
Dear Appeal:^ I inclose a check to be used for subscriptions
to the Appeal to Reason. I am prompted to this by indigna-
tion at the unrighteous conviction of the editor, Mr. Fred
WarrenJ
I believe that the conviction is unrighteous, although I
have arrived at this conclusion with some hesitancy. For a
mere woman, denied participation in government, must
needs speak timidly of the mysterious mental processes of
men, and especially of ermined justices. No doubt any lay-
man would give offense who should be guilty of the indiscre-
tion of criticizing the decision of a high court. Still, the more
I study Mr. Warren's case in the light of the United States
Constitution, which I have under my fingers, the more I am
persuaded either that I do not understand or that the judges
do not. I used to honor our courts, which I was told were no
respecters of persons. I was glad and proud in the thought of
our noble heritage — a free law open to all children of the
nation alike. But I have come not only to doubt the divine
impartiality ascribed to our judiciary but also to question
whether our judges are conspicuous for simple good sense
and fair dealing. . . .
Are not these the facts: Several years ago three officers of
the Western Federation of Miners were indicted for a murder
committed in Idaho.^ They were in Colorado, and the gover-
nor of that state did not extradite them. They were kid-
napped and brought to an Idaho prison. They applied to the
Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus, on the ground
that they were illegally held because they had been illegally
captured. The Supreme Court replied: "Even if it be true
that the arrest and deportation of Pettibone, Moyer and
Haywood were by fraud and connivance to which the gover-
nor of Colorado was a party this does not make out a case of
violation of the rights of the appellants under the Constitu-
tion and the laws of the United States."®
27
28 Helen Kjeller: Her Socialist Years
Some years before this event ex-Governor Taylor, of Ken-
tucky, was indicted for murder, and was wanted in his state.
Mr. Warren offered a reward for the capture of Mr. Taylor
and his return to the Kentucky authorities. I understand
that it is not an unusual thing for a citizen to aid in this
manner in the apprehension of a fugitive from justice.
To what twistings, turnings and dark interpretation must
the judges of the Circuit Court be driven in order to send
Mr. Warren to prison! As I understand it, a federal law de-
fining the kind of matter which it is a crime to mail has
been stretched to cover his act. What was the act? The offer
of a reward was printed on the outside of envelopes mailed
from Girard by Mr. Warren. This was construed as threaten-
ing, because it was an encouragement to others to kidnap a
man under indictment. This the Supreme Court had by
implication declared to be an innocent act; for in the case of
Pettibone, Moyer and Haywood, the accomplished act itself
was held to be no infringement of the rights of a citizen.
One need not be a Socialist to realize the significance, the
gravity, not of Mr. Warren's offense, but of the offense of
the judges against the Constitution, and against democratic
rights. It is provided that "Congress shall make no law . . .
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." Surely this
means that we are free to print and mail any innocent matter.
What Mr. Warren printed and mailed had been established
by the Supreme Court as innocent. What beam was in the
eye of the justices of the circuit courts? It is evident that
their several decisions do not stand in the same light. It has
been my duty, my life work, to study physical blindness, its
causes and its prevention. I learn that our physicians are mak-
ing great progress in the cure and the prevention of blind-
ness. What surgery of politics, what antiseptic of common
sense and right thinking, shall be applied to cure the blind-
ness of our judges, and to prevent the blindness of the people,
who are the court of last resort?
— NEW YORK Call, JANUARY 1, 1911
Social Causes of Blindness
Speech in Behalf of the Massachusetts Association for
Promoting the Interests of the Blind, Boston, February
14, 1911
I rejoice that the greatest of all work for the blind, the
saving of eyesight, has been laid so clearly before the public.
The reports of progress in the conservation of eyes, of health,
of life, of all things precious to men are as a trumpet blast
summoning us to still greater effort. The devotion of physi-
cians and laymen, and the terrible needs of our fellowmen
ought to hearten us in the fight against conquerable misery.
Our worst foes are ignorance, poverty and the unconscious
cruelty of our commercial society. ^^ These are the causes of
much blindness, these are the enemies which destroy the
sight of little children and workmen, and undermine the
health of mankind. So long as these enemies remain unvan-
quished, so long will there be blind and crippled men and
women.
To study the diseases and accidents by which sight is lost,
and to learn how the surgeon can prevent or alleviate them,
is not enough. We must strive to put an end to the conditions
which cause the disease and accidents.
This case of blindness, the physician says, resulted from
ophthalmia. It was really caused by a dark, overcrowded
room, by the indecent herding together of human beings in
insanitary tenements. We are told that another case was
produced by the bursting of a wheel. The real cause was an
employer's failure to safeguard his machines. Investigation
shows that there are many clever safeguards for machinery
which ought to be used in factories, but which are not
adopted because their adoption would diminish the em-
ployer's profits.
Labor reports indicate that we Americans have been slow,
dishonorably slow, in taking measures for the protection of
our workmen.
29
30 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Does it occur to you that the white lace which we wear is
darkened by the failing eyes of the lace maker? The trouble
is that we do not understand the essential relation between
poverty and disease. I do not believe that there is any one in
this city of kind hearts who would willingly receive dividends
if he knew that they were paid in part with blinded eyes and
broken backs. If you doubt that there is such a connection
between our prosperity and the sorrows of the poor, consult
those bare but illuminated reports of industrial commissions
and labor bureaus. They are less eloquent than oratory. In
them you will find the fundamental causes of much blind-
ness and crookedness, of shrunken limbs and degraded minds.
These causes must be searched out, and every condition in
which blindness breeds must be exposed and abolished. Let
our battle cry be: "No preventable disease, no unnecessary
poverty, no blinding ignorance among mankind."
NEW YORK Call, FEBRUARY 15, 1911
To an English Woman-Suffragist
I thank you for the copy of "Votes for Women." Mr.
Zangwill's address interested me deeply.^^ You ask me to
comment on it, and though I know little, your request en-
courages me to tell you some of my ideas on the subject.
I have thought much lately about the question of woman-
suffrage, and I have followed in my Braille magazines the
recent elections in Great Britain. The other day I read a
fine report of an address by Miss Pankhurst at a meeting in
New York.i2
I do not believe that the present government has any in-
tention of giving women a part in national politics, or doing
justice to Ireland, or the workmen of England. So long as the
franchise is denied to a large number of those who serve and
benefit the public, so long as those who vote are at the beck
and call of party machines, the people are not free, and the
day of women's freedom seems still to be in the far future. It
makes no difference whether the Tories or the Liberals in
Great Britain, the Democrats or the Republicans in the
United States, or any party of the old model in any other
country, get the upper hand. To ask any such party for
women's rights is like asking a czar for democracy.
Are not the dominant parties managed by the ruling
classes, that is, the propertied classes, solely for the profit and
privilege of the few? They use us millions to help them into
power. They tell us, like so many children, that our safety
lies in voting for them. They toss us crumbs of concession
to make us believe that they are working in our interest.
Then they exploit the resources of the nation not for us, but
for the interests which they represent and uphold. We, the
people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name. We vote?
What does that mean? It means that we choose between two
bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose
between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. We elect expensive
masters to do our work for us, and then blame them because
they work for themselves and for their class.
31
32 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
The enfranchisement of women is a part of the vast move-
ment to enfranchise all mankind. You ask for votes for
women. What good can votes do you when ten-elevenths of
the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000, and only one-
eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with
their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?
When one shows the masters that half the wealth of Great
Britain belongs to 25,000 persons, when one says that this is
wrong, that this wrong lies at the bottom of all social in-
justice, including the wrong of women, the highly respectable
newspapers cry "Socialist Agitator! Stirrer of Class Strife!"
Well, let us agitate, let us confess that we are thorough-
going Social Democrats, or anything else that they please to
label us. But let us keep our eyes on the central fact that a
few, a few British men own the majority of British men and
all British women. The few own the many, because they
possess the means of livelihood of all. In our splendid re-
public, where at election time all are free and equal, a few
Americans own the rest. Eighty percent of our people live in
rented houses, and one-half of the rest are mortgaged. The
country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the
bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.
Surely we must free men and women together before we can
free women.
The majority of mankind are working people. So long as
their fair demands — the ownership and control of their lives
and livelihood — are set at naught, we can have neither men's
rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is
ground down by industrial oppression in order that the
small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to
help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless
against the powerful organizations which modern parties
represent and which contrive to rule the people. They rule
the people because they own the means of physical life, land
and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press,
the church and the school.
You say that the conduct of the women suffragists is being
disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in
To AN English Woman-Suffragist 33
America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possi-
ble way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek
relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully
concealed — news of dreadful conditions under which laborers
are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in
mills and mines and left without compensation, news of
famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to
a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labor
before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here
and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the
truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under
which he staggers.
I am indignant at the treatment of the brave, patient
women of England. I am indignant when the women cloak-
makers of Chicago are abused by the police. I am filled with
anguish when I think of the degradation, the enslavement
and the industrial tyranny which crushes millions and drags
down women and helpless children.
I know the deep interest which you and your husband
always took in God's poor, and your sympathy invites me to
open my heart to you and express these opinions about grave
problems.
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE MANCHESTER (ENGLAND) Advertiser,
MARCH 3, 1911; REPRINTED IN PART IN THE NEW YORK Call,
MAY 14, 1911
The Unemployed
Some time ago I received a pathetic letter from a workman
in a woolen mill. I quote a part of it:
"I was employed in the worsted trade in England before
coming to this country. I had worked for ten years and
learned a good deal about wool, tops and noils. I came to
this country in the hope of climbing the industrial ladder.
I could hear pretty well, or I should not have passed the
immigration officers. I got work quickly at the very bottom of
the ladder. I kept my eyes open and learned everything that
came my way, and in time I was transferred to the combing
room to learn to be a section hand. By this time my hearing
had become slightly worse. All the help in this department
were either Italians or Poles, so that between their broken
English and my defective hearing I was much handicapped.
I have been on short time for over a year, and since the New
Year I have earned $6.71 per week. There are six of us to
feed, clothe and shelter, and coal to buy. How to find a
bare existence is the problem that confronts me today. I
would take anything where I could earn steady pay. I have
the idea that I shall yet rise out of the mire. But in the
meantime I must live and support my family, and this I
cannot do under present circumstances."
This workman is deaf, but his position is similar to that
of many of the sightless. We have been accustomed to regard
the unemployed deaf and blind as victims of their infirmities.
This is to say, we have supposed that if their sight and hear-
ing were miraculously restored, they would find work. The
problem of the underpaid and underemployed workman is
too large to discuss here. But I wish to suggest to the readers
of this article that the unemployment of the blind is only
part of a greater problem.
There are, it is estimated, a million laborers out of work
in the United States. Their inaction is not due to physical
defects or lack of ability or of intelligence, or to ill health
34
The Unemployed 35
or vice. It is due to the fact that our present system of pro-
duction necessitates a large margin of idle men. The business
world in which we live cannot give every man opportunity
to fulfil his capabilities or even assure him continuous occu-
pation as an unskilled laborer. The means of employment
— the land and the factories, that is, the tools of labor — are
in the hands of a minority of the people, and are used rather
with a view to increasing the owner's profits than with a
view to keeping all men busy and productive. Hence there
are more men than jobs. This is the first and the chief evil
of the so-called capitalistic system of production. The work-
man has nothing to sell but his labor. He is in strife, in
rivalry with his fellows for a chance to sell his power.
Naturally the weaker workman is thrust aside. That does
not mean that he is utterly incapacitated for industrial ac-
tivity, but only that he is less capable than his successful
competitor.
In the majority of cases there is no relation between un-
employment and ability. A factory shuts down and all the
operatives, the more competent as well as the less competent,
are thrown out of work. In February the cotton mill owners
of Massachusetts agreed to run the mills on a schedule of
four days a week. The employees were not to blame for the
reduction of work, nor were the employers to blame. The
considerations of the market compelled it.
Thus, it has come to pass that in this land of plenty there
is an increasing number of "superfluous men." The doors of
industry are closed to them the whole year or part of the year.
No less than six million American men, women and the
children are in a permanent state of want because of total or
partial idleness. In a small corner of this vast social distress
we find our unemployed blind. Their lack of sight is not
the primary cause of their idleness; it is a contributing cause;
it relegates them to the enormous army of the unwilling idle.
We can subsidize the work of the sightless; we can build
special institutions and factories for them, and solicit the
help of wealthy patrons. But the blind man cannot become
an independent, self-supporting member of society, he can
36 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
never do all that he is capable of, until all his seeing brothers
have opportunities to work to the full extent of their ability.
We know now that the welfare of the whole people is essen-
tial to the welfare of each. We know that the blind are not
debarred from usefulness solely by their infirmity. Their
idleness is fundamentally caused by conditions which press
heavily upon all working people, and deprive hundreds of
thousands of good men of a livelihood.
I recommend that all who are interested in the economic
problem of the sightless study the economic problem of the
seeing. Let us begin with such books as Mr. Robert Hunter's
Poverty, and Edmond Kelly's Twentieth Century Socialism.^^
Let us read these books, not for "theory," as it is sometimes
scornfully called, but for facts about the labor conditions in
America. Mr. Kelly was a teacher of political economy, a lec-
turer on municipal government at Columbia University.
Mr. Hunter has spent many years studying the American
workman in his home and in the shop. The facts which they
spread before us show that it is not physical blindness, but
social blindness which cheats our hands of the right to toil.
— Zeigler Magazine for the Blind, april 1911
To the Strikers at Little Falls, New York
I am sending the check which Mr. Davis paid me for the
Christmas sentiments I sent him. Will you give it to the brave
girls who are striving so courageously to bring about the
emancipation of the workers at Little Falls?^*
They have my warmest sympathy. Their cause is my cause.
If they are denied a living wage, I also am denied. While
they are industrial slaves, I cannot be free. My hunger is not
satisfied while they are unfed. I cannot enjoy the good things
of life which come to me, if they are hindered and neglected,
I want all the workers of the world to have sufficient money
to provide the elements of a normal standard of living — a
decent home, healthful surroundings, opportunity for edu-
cation and recreation. I want them all to have the same
blessings that I have. I, deaf and blind, have been helped to
overcome many obstacles. I want them to be helped as
generously in a struggle which resembles my own in many
ways.
Surely the things that the workers demand are not un-
reasonable. It cannot be unreasonable to ask of society a fair
chance for all. It cannot be unreasonable to demand the pro-
tection of women and little children and an honest wage
for all who give their time and energy to industrial occu-
pations. When indeed shall we learn that we are all related
one to the other, that we are all members of one body? Until
the spirit of love for our fellowmen, regardless of race, color
or creed, shall fill the world, making real in our lives and
our deeds the actuality of human brotherhood — until the
great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of re-
sponsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never
be attained.
Solidarity, November 21, 1912
37
The Hand of the World
The symbol, sign, and instrument
Of each soul's purpose, passion, strife,
Of fires in which are poured and spent
Their all of love, their all of life.
O feeble, mighty human hand!
O fragile, dauntless human heart!
The universe holds nothing planned
With such sublime, transcendent art!
— Helen Fiske Jackson
As I write this, I am sitting in a pleasant house, in a sunny,
wide-windowed study filled with plants and flowers. Here I
sit warmly clad, secure against want, sure that what my
welfare requires the world will give. Through these gen-
erous surroundings I feel the touch of a hand, invisible but
potent, all-sustaining — the hand that wove my garments, the
hand that stretched the roof over my head, the hand which
printed the pages that I read.
What is that hand which shelters me? In vain the winds
buffet my house and hurl the biting cold against the win-
dows: that hand still keeps me warm. What is it, that I may
lean upon it at every step I take in the dark, and it fails me
not? I give wondering praise to the beneficent hand that
ministers to my joy and comfort, that toils for the daily
bread of all. I would gratefully acknowledge my debt to its
capability and kindness. I pray that some hearts may heed
my words about the hand of the world, that they may believe
in the coming of that commonwealth in which the gyves
[chains] shall be struck from the wrist of Labor, and the
pulse of Production shall be strong with joy.
All our earthly well-being hangs upon the living hand of
the world. Society is founded upon it. Its life-beats throb in
our institutions. Every industry, every process, is wrought by
38
The Hand of the World 39
a hand, or by a superhand — a machine whose mighty arm
and cunning fingers the human hand invents and wields. The
hand embodies its skill, projects and multiplies itself, in
wondrous tools, and with them it spins and weaves, plows
and reaps, converts clay into walls, and roofs our habitations
with trees of the forest. It compels titans of steel to heave
incredible burdens, and commands the service of nimble
lackeys which neither groan nor become exhausted. Com-
munication between mind and mind, between writer and
reader is made possible by marvelous extensions of the might
of the hand, by elaborate reduplications of the many-mo-
tioned fingers. I have touched one of those great printing
presses in which a river of paper flows over the type, is cut,
folded, and piled with swift precision. Between my thoughts
and the words which you read on this page a thousand hands
have intervened; a hundred shafts of steel have rocked to and
fro, to and fro in industrious rhythm.
The hand of the world! Think how it sends forth the
waters where it will to form canals between the seas, and
binds the same seas with thoughts incorporated in arms of
stone! What is the telegraph cable but the quick hand of the
world extended between the nations, now menacing, now
clasped in brotherhood? What are our ships and railways but
the feet of man made swift and strong by his hands? The
hand captures the winds, the sun, and the lightnings, and dis-
patches them upon errands of commerce. Before its irresisti-
ble blows, mountains are beaten small as dust. Huge derricks
— prehensile power magnified in digits of steel — rear fac-
tories and palaces, lay stone upon stone in our stately monu-
ments, and raise cathedral spires.
On the hand of the world are visible the records of biology,
of history, of all human existence since the day of the "first
thumb that caught the trick of thought." Every hand wears
a birth-seal. By the lines of the thumb each of us can be
identified from infancy to age. So by the marks on the
hands of the world its unmistakable personality is revealed.
Through suffering and prosperity, through periods of retro-
grade and progress, the hand keeps its identity. Even now.
40 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
when the ceaseless ply of the world-shuttles is so clamorous
and confused, when the labor of the individual is lost in the
complexities of production, the old human hand, the symbol
of the race, may still be discerned, blurred by the speed of its
movements, but master and guide of all that whirring loom.
Study the hand, and you shall find in it the true picture of
man, the story of human growth, the measure of the world's
greatness and weakness. Its courage, its steadfastness, its per-
tinacity, make all the welfare of the human race. Upon the
trustworthiness of strong, toil-hardened hands rests the life
of each and all. Every day thousands of people enter the rail-
way train and trust their lives to the hand that grasps the
throttle of the locomotive. Such responsibility kindles the
imagination! But more profound is the thought that the
destiny and the daily life of mankind depend upon countless
obscure hands that are never lifted up in any dramatic ges-
ture to remind the world of their existence. In Sartor Re-
sartus Carlyle expresses our obligation to the uncelebrated
hands of the worker:
"Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked and coarse;
wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue indefeasibly
royal as the Scepter of this Planet. . . . Hardly entreated
Brother! For us was thy way so bent, for us were thy straight
limb and fingers so deformed; thou wert our Conscript on
whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred.
For in thee too lay a God-created Form, but it was not to be
unfolded. Encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions
and defacements of Labor; and thy body, like thy soul, was
not to know Freedom."
But wherefore these deformities and defacements? Where-
fore this bondage that cramps the soul? A million tool-hands
are at our service, tireless and efficient, having neither heart
nor nerve. Why do they not lift the burden from those
bowed shoulders? Can it be that man is captive to his own
machine, manacled to his own handiwork, like the convict
chained to the prison wall that he himself has built? Instru-
ments multiply, they incorporate more and more of the in-
telligence of men; they not only perform coarse drudgery.
The Hand of the World 41
but also imitate accurately many of the hand's most difficult
dexterities. Still the God-created Form is bowed. Innumera-
ble souls are still denied their freedom. Still the fighter of
our battles is maimed and defrauded.
Once I rejoiced when I heard of a new invention for the
comfort of man. Taught by religion and a gentle home life,
nourished with good books, I could not but believe that all
men had access to the benefits of inventive genius. When I
heard that locomotives had doubled in size and speed, I
thought: "The food of the wheat fields will come cheaper to
the poor of the cities now," and I was glad. But flour costs
more today than when I read of those great new engines.
Why do not improved methods of milling and transportation
improve the dinner of the poor? I supposed that in our
civilization all advances benefited every man. I imagined that
every worthy endeavor brought a sure reward. I had felt in
my life the touch only of hands that uphold the weak, hands
that are all eye and ear, charged with helpful intelligence.
I believed that people made their own conditions, and that if
the conditions were not always of the best they were at least
tolerable, just as my infirmity was tolerable.
As the years went by, and I read more widely, I learned
that the miseries and failures of the poor are not always due
to their own faults, that multitudes of men, for some strange
reason, fail to share in the much talked of progress of the
world. I shall never forget the pain and amazement which
I felt when I came to examine the statistics of blindness, its
causes and its connections with other calamities that befall
thousands of my fellow men. I learned how workmen are
stricken by the machine hands that they are operating. It be-
came clear to me that the labor-saving machine does not save
the laborer. It saves expense and makes profits for the owner
of the machine. The worker has no share in the increased
production due to improved methods; and, what is worse, as
the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own
feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own
skill. The multipotent machine displaces the very hand that
created it. The productivity of the machine seems to be val-
42 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
ued above the human hand; for the machine is often left
without proper safeguards, and so hurts the very life it was
intended to serve.
Step by step my investigation of blindness led me into the
industrial world. And what a world it isl How different
from the world of my beliefs! I must face unflinchingly a
world of facts — a world of misery and degradation, of blind-
ness, crookedness, and sin, a world struggling against the
elements, against the unknown, against itself. How reconcile
this world of fact with the bright world of my imagining?
My darkness had been filled with the light of intelligence
and, behold, the outer daylit world was stumbling and grop-
ing in social blindness! At first I was most unhappy; but
deeper study restored my confidence. By learning the suf-
ferings and burdens of men, I became aware as never before
of the life-power that survived the forces of darkness, the
power which, though never completely victorious, is con-
tinuously conquering. The very fact that we are still here
carrying on the contest against the hosts of annihilation
proves that on the whole the battle has gone for humanity.
The world's great heart has proved equal to the prodigious
undertaking which God set it. Rebuffed, but always per-
severing; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; un-
daunted, tenacious, the heart of man labors toward im-
measurably distant goals. Discouraged not by difficulties
without or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to
a secret voice that whispers: "Be not dismayed; in the future
lies the Promised Land."
When I think of all the wonders that the hand of man has
wrought, I rejoice and am lifted up. It seems the image and
agent of the Hand that upholds us all. We are its creatures,
its triumphs, remade by it in the ages since the birth of the
race. Nothing on earth is so thrilling, so terrifying, as the
power of our hands to keep us or mar us. All that man does
is the hand alive, the hand manifest, creating and destroying,
itself the interest of order and demolition. It moves a stone,
and the universe undergoes a readjustment. It breaks a clod.
The Hand of the World 43
and a new beauty bursts forth in fruits and flowers, and the
sea of fertility flows over the desert.
With our hands we raise each other to the heights of knowl-
edge and achievement, and with the same hands we plunge
each other into the pit. I have stood beside a gun which they
told me could in a few minutes destroy a town and all the
people in it. When I learned how much the gun cost, I
thought: "Enough labor is wasted on that gun to build a
town full of clean streets and wholesome dwellings!" Mis-
guided hands that destroy their own handiwork and deface
the image of God! Wonderful hands that wound and can
bind up, that make sore and can heal, suffering all injuries,
yet triumphant in measureless enterprise! What on earth is
like unto the hands in their possibilities of good and evil?
So much creative power has God deputed to us that we can
fashion human beings round about with strong sinews and
noble limbs, or we can shrivel them up, grind living hearts
and living hands in the mills of penury. This power gives me
confidence. But because it is often misdirected, my confidence
is mingled with discontent.
"Why is it," I asked, and turned to the literature of our
day for answer, "why is it that so many workers live in un-
speakable misery?" With their hands they have built great
cities, and they cannot be sure of a roof over their heads.
With their hands they have opened mines and dragged forth
with the strength of their bodies the buried sunshine of dead
forests, and they are cold. They have gone down into the
bowels of the earth for diamonds and gold, and they haggle
for a loaf of bread. With their hands they erect temple and
palace, and their habitation is a crowded room in a tenement.
They plow and sow and fill our hands with flowers while
their own hands are full of husks.
In our mills, factories, and mines, human hands are herded
together to dig, to spin, and to feed the machines that they
have made, and the product of the machine is not theirs. Day
after day naked hands, without safeguard, without respite,
must guide the machines under dangerous and unclean con-
ditions. Day after day they must keep firm hold of the little
44 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
that they grasp of life, until they are hardened, brutalized.
Still the portent of idle hands grows apace, and the hand-to-
hand grapple waxes more fierce. O pitiful blindness! O folly
that men should allow such contradictions — contradictions
that violate not only the higher justice, but the plainest com-
mon sense. How do the hands that have achieved the Maure-
tania become so impotent that they cannot save themselves
from drowning? How do our hands that have stretched rail-
ways and telegraphs round the world become so shortened
that they cannot redeem themselves?
Why is it that willing hands are denied the prerogatives of
labor, that the hand of man is against man? At the bidding of
a single hand thousands rush to produce, or hang idle. Amaz-
ing that hands which produce nothing should be exalted and
jeweled with authority! In yonder town the textile mills are
idle, and the people want shoes. Fifty miles away, in another
town, the shoe factories are silent, and the people want
clothes. Between these two arrested forces of production is
that record of profits and losses called the market. The
buyers of clothes and shoes in the market are the workers
themselves; but they cannot buy what their hands have made.
Is it not unjust that the hands of the world are not subject
to the will of the workers, but are driven by the blind force of
necessity to obey the will of the few? And who are these few?
They are themselves the slaves of the market and the victims
of necessity.
Driven by the very maladjustments that wound it, and en-
abled by its proved capacity for readjustment and harmony,
society must move onward to a state in which every hand
shall work and reap the fruits of its own endeavor, no less, no
more. This is the third world which I have discovered. From
a world of dreams I was plunged into a world of fact, and
thence I have emerged into a society which is still a dream,
but rooted in the actual. The commonwealth of the future is
growing surely out of the state in which we now live. There
will be strife, but no aimless, self-defeating strife. There will
be competition, but no soul-destroying, hand-crippling com-
petition. There will be only honest emulation in cooperative
The Hand of the World 45
effort. There will be example to instruct, companionship to
cheer, and to lighten burdens, Each hand will do its part in
the provision of food, clothing, shelter, and the other great
needs of man, so that if poverty comes all will bear it alike,
and if prosperity shines all will rejoice in its warmth.
There have been such periods in the history of man. Hu-
man nature has proved itself capable of equal cooperation.
But the early communist societies, of which history tells us,
were primitive in their methods of production — half civilized,
as we say who dare call our present modes of life civilization.
The coming age will be complex, and will relinquish nothing
useful in the methods which it has learned in long struggles
through tyrannies and fierce rivalries of possession. To the
hand of the world belongs the best, the noblest, the most stu-
pendous task, the subjection of all the forces of nature to the
mind of man, the subjection of physical strength to the might
of the spirit. We are still far from this loftiest of triumphs of
the hand. Its forces are still to be disciplined and organized.
The limbs of the world must first be restored. In order that
no limb may suffer, and that none may keep the others in
bondage, the will of the many must become self-conscious and
intelligently united. Then the hand — the living power of
man, the hewer of the world — will be laid with undisputed
sway upon the machine with which it has so long been con-
founded. There will be abundance for all, and no hands will
cry out any more against the arm of the might. The hand of
the world will then have achieved what it now obscurely sym-
bolizes— the uplifting and regeneration of the race, all that
is highest, all that is creative in man.
— ^FiRST PUBLISHED IN American Magazine, December 1912,
pp. 43-45, AND REPRINTED IN PART IN Appeal to Reasou Leaf-
lets, PUBLISHED BY THE Appeal to Reason (girard, Kansas),
NUMBER SIX, UNDER THE TITLE "THE HAND OF THE WORLD BY
HELEN KELLER, THE BLIND GIRL WHO OVERCAME GREAT DIF-
FICULTIES."
A Call for Harmony
Editor of the Call:
It is with the deepest regret that I have read the attacks
uf>on Comrade Haywood which have appeared in the National
Socialist}^ It fills me with amazement to see such a narrow
spirit, such an ignoble strife between two factions which
should be one, and that, too, at a most critical period in the
struggle of the proletariat.
What? Are we to put difference of party tactics before the
desperate needs of the workers? Are we no better than the
capitalist politicians who stand in the high places and ha-
rangue about petty matters, while millions of the f)eople are
underpaid, underfed, thrown out of work and dying? While
countless women and children are breaking their hearts and
ruining their bodies in long days of toil, we are fighting one
another. Shame upon us! The enemy is at our very doors, and
the hand of the destroyer does its fell work, while we leave
the victims helpless, because we think more of our own
theories — theories that have not even been tested!
It is well for us to disagree and discuss our differences fully
and vigorously. But it is stupid to make the issues personal.
If the points of controversy are ever so weighty, they are not
so great as to justify the mischief which springs from the
quarrels of comrades. How can the workers, whom we urge
to unite, look to us Socialists for guidance if we fail to unite?
What are we organized for? What is our chief bond of
unity? What is our avowed object? The welfare of the work-
ing class and the abolition of capitalism. By our fidelity to
the working class and to our ultimate purpose we are to be
tested. Our rise or fall depends not upon theories of party
tactic, but upon what we do or fail to do in the practical
contest. There are many ways to work for the coming of the
Cooperative Commonwealth. But those who hope for that
commonwealth and work for it, those who are on the
workers' side of the battle are our comrades. They can never
46
A Call for Harmony 47
cease to be our comrades, even though they withdraw from
our party, or are dismissed from our party. We are the friends
of all who serve the workers, of all who labor for the social
revolution, for the uplifting and enlightenment of all men.
When will the champions of the oppressed unite, and thus
hasten the day of deliverance?
— ^NEW YORK Callj JANUARY 4, 1913
Why President Wilson Must Fail
The tariff will keep President Wilson very, very busy for
a long time, and, I believe, will end in a compromise with
big business, or with its representatives in the Legislature.^^
We cannot have justice until the greatest trust of all — the
people's trust — has succeeded these money-making trusts.
And that time is coming.
I foresee the day when the people will take over all of
man's products and distribute and transport them to the
consumer. Man's affairs will be managed by all for the bene-
fit of all.
That is democracy. We have never before seen democracy.
It has never existed in the world. There has never been a
free nation. From time immemorial men have bowed to the
wills of masters. They have never rejoiced in the labor of
their hands, because some master has always taken a large
part of their toil for his profits. That is the most wonderful
thing in the world to me — that men have continued all
these centuries to allow other men to take the greater por-
tions of their labors. Nobody robs us on the highway without
the hue and cry of law — but the trusts have taken our prod-
uce, our waterways, our resources — and have converted
them to their own usage. Never until the people own and
manage these things will there be happiness.
But I feel most hopeful. It is all in a day's work to hope,
you know.
But President Wilson, though his intentions are good,
and his ability great, cannot aid us in our fight for true
democracy.
President Wilson will fail because the forces against him
are stronger than himself; stronger than any President has
even been. He will have to fight blindly against a system
that has been carefully built up — a system of trusts that
have concentrated more and more the world's wealth and
the world's efficiency and profit.
48
Why President Wilson Must Fail 49
His own party will be against him. In lessening "big busi-
ness" profit he will alienate his closest supporters.
The President has said he will hang, higher than Haman,
all who disturb business conditions. The "interests," when
they heard that, must have laughed in their sleeves. He can-
not lay his hands on them. As fast as one trust is divided,
another springs up.
NEW YORK Call, APRIL 16, 1913
To the Editor of the New York Evening Sun
It is you who are smashing the china in my cupboard, Mr.
Editor! ^^ What has been done to you? You fly into a tirade at
everything — at the wind, at the weather and at a peaceful
spinster in a New England village. Your pen is a lash which
is always flecking something or somebody. Angels of Heaven,
defend me from your wrath! It bursts forth more unexpect-
edly than summer lightning, more abundantly than summer
rain, more impetuously than the wrath of a despot. It comes
from one half asleep in the country like a hurricane; it up-
roots, it carries away, it banishes repose, it disperses sweet
thoughts.
You are no longer a reasonable being. You pronounce a
verdict of guilty in the absence of the accused, with closed
doors, without defense, without appeal. You set out with
the assumption that a piece of newspaper gossip is a fact.
You make no effort to ascertain the truth. You put spur to
your fancy, and your gallop is accelerated by the speed of
your motion. You strike out blindly to right, to left, above,
below, far and near, at random. You cut and thrust in the
dark, vain, implacable man! You almost prove that it is
impossible to be just and a capitalist. You want every one
to think as you do, believe as you do, pray as you do, reason
as you do, fall in love as you do. Let any one oppose you with
a "but," an "if," a smile or a silence, and straightway that
intrepid one is sacrificed before the sun.
Your aspect is disturbing, Mr. Editor, to one who "turns
her attention" to the terrible evils of the capitalistic system
which you serve — a system which quenches out the souls of
little children, makes motherhood a sorrow, breaks men's
bodies and brutalizes their minds. These commonplace truths
sound harsh to your delicate ears. It is "inconvenient" that
one deaf and blind from infancy, and "brought up under the
capitalistic system" should utter such impious blasphemies
against a system which every one knows to be humane, phil-
30
To THE Editor of the New York Evening Sun 51
anthropic, Christian. Anathema upon those rash beings,
feminine or otherwise, who dispense "socialistic common-
places." Mr. Editor, it is you who are deaf and dumb and
blind.
We are admonished not to fear giving pain to a brother
who goes astray. We owe it to him to keep his duty before
his conscience, in the hope that our words will awaken in
his heart a beneficent trouble, a salutary disquiet which he
will perhaps never avow publicly, but which he will never-
theless confess with gratitude in the editorial sanctum.
— new YORK Sun, JUNE 8, 1913; reprinted in new york
Call, JUNE 11, 1913
A New Light Is Coming
Address at the Sociological Conference, Sagamore Beach,
Massachusetts
Dear Friends: I came here to listen, not to talk. I have not
prepared a speech. But I suppose a woman can always think
of something to say. If other subjects fail, one can talk about
oneself.
Ever since I came here, people have been asking my friends
how I can have a first-hand knowledge of the subjects you
are discussing. They seem to think that one deaf and blind
cannot know about the world of p>eople, of ideas, of facts.
Well, I plead guilty to the charge that I am deaf and blind,
though I forget the fact most of the time. It is true, I cannot
hear my neighbors discussing the questions of the day. But,
judging from what is repeated to me of their discussions, I
feel that I do not miss much. I can read. I can read the views
of well-informed thinkers like Alfred Russell Wallace, Sir
Oliver Lodge, Ruskin, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Karl
Kautsky, Darwin and Karl Marx. Besides books, I have maga-
zines in raised print published in America, England, France,
Germany and Austria.
Of course, I am not always on the spot when things hap-
pen, nor are you. I did not witness the dreadful accident at
Stamford the other day, nor did you, nor did most people in
the United States. But that did not prevent me, any more it
prevented you, from knowing about it.
To be sure, I have never been a captain of industry, or a
soldier, or a strikebreaker. But I have studied these pro-
fessions, and I think I understand their relation to society.
At all events, I claim my right to discuss them. I have the
advantage of a mind trained to think, and that is the differ-
ence between myself and most people, not my blindness and
their sight. It seems to me that they are blind indeed who
do not see that there must be something very wrong when
52
A New Light Is Coming 53
the workers — the men and women who produce the wealth
of the nation — are ill paid, ill fed, ill clothed, ill housed. Deaf
indeed are they who do not hear the desperation in the voice
of the people crying out against cruel poverty and social in-
justice. Dull indeed are their hearts who turn their backs
upon misery and support a system that grinds the life and
soul out of men and women.
I have been much interested in what I have heard here. I
am glad so many of you have your eyes open to the questions
of the day, and to the great change that is taking place in the
structure of society. There is always hope of improvement
when people are willing to try to understand. The change
will take place whether we understand or not. Comrade
Giovannitti^^ has explained to you how he believes that great
change is coming. If you understood him, you will see that it
is the workers themselves who will work out their own sal-
vation. All we can do is to get into the procession.
We are marching toward a new freedom. We are learning
that freedom is the only safe condition for all human beings,
men and women and children. Only through freedom, free-
dom for all, can we hope for a true democracy. Some of us
have imagined that we live in a democracy. We do not. A
democracy would mean equal opportunity for all. It would
mean that every child had a chance to be well born, well fed,
well taught and properly started in life. It would mean that
every woman had a voice in the making of the laws under
which she lives. It would mean that all men enjoyed the
fruits of their labor. Such a democracy has never existed.
But some of us are waking up. We are finding out what is
wrong with the world. We are going to make it right. We
are learning that we live by each other, and that the life for
each other is the only life worth living. A new light is coming
to millions who looked for light and found darkness, a life to
them who looked for the grave, and were bitter in spirit. We
are part of this light. Let us go forth from here shafts of the
sun unto shadows. With our hearts let us see, with your hands
let us break every chain. Then, indeed, shall we know a
better and nobler humanity. For there will be no more
54 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
slaves. Men will not go on strike for 50 cents more a week.
Little children will not have to starve or work in mill and
factory. Motherhood will no longer be a sorrow. We shall be
"just one great family of friends and brothers."
NEW YORK Call, JULY 8, 1913
New Vision for the Blind
I have visited sweatshops, factories, crowded slums of New
York and Washington. Of course I could not see the squalor;
but if I could not see it, I could smell it.
With my own hands I could feel pinched, dwarfed chil-
dren tending their younger brothers and sisters, while their
mothers tended machines in nearby factories.
Besides the advantages of books and of personal experience,
I have the advantage of a mind trained to think. In most
people I talked with thought is infantile. In the well edu-
cated it is rare. In time their minds become automatic
machines.
People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach
conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They
are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and
a deep responsibility to think.
When we inquire why things are as they are, the answer
is, the foundation of society is laid upon a basis of individ-
ualism, conquest and exploitation, with a total disregard of
the good of the whole.
The structure of a society built upon such wrong basic
principles is bound to retard the development of all men,
even the most successful ones because it tends to divert man's
energies into useless channels and to degrade his character.
The result is a false standard of values. Trade and material
prosperity are held to be the main objects of pursuit and
conquest, the lowest instincts in human nature — love of
gain, cunning and selfishness — are fostered.
The output of a cotton mill or a coal mine is considered of
greater importance than the production of healthy, happy-
hearted, free human beings.
Crushed, stupefied by terrible poverty, the workers yet
demand that they shall have some of the beauty, some of the
comforts, some of the luxuries which they have produced.
The time of blind struggle is drawing to a close. The forces
55
56 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
governing the law of the survival of the fittest will continue
to operate, but they will be under the conscious, intelligent
control of man.
In all my reading I am conscious of a multitudinous dis-
content. Slowly man is waking up. The people — the great
"common herd" — are finding out what is wrong with the
social, political and economical structure of the system of
which they are a part.
This is not a time of gentleness, of timid beginnings that
steal into life with soft apologies and dainty grace. It is a time
for loud voiced, open speech and fearless thinking; a time of
striving and conscious manhood, a time of all that is robust
and vehement and bold; a time radiant with new ideals, new
hopes of true democracy.
I love it, for it thrills me and gives me a feeling that I
shall face great and terrible things. I am a child of my gener-
ation, and I rejoice that I live in such a splendidly disturbing
time.
— Justice (PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA), OCTOBER 25, 1913
Brutal Treatment of the Unemployed in Sacramento
I think their treatment was outrageous.^^ It is not a crime
to protest for your fellows. It is not a crime to be without
bread.
They say that these men are IWW's and that means, *I
Won't Work.' I honor these men for their protest.
I am a socialist because I believe that socialism will solve
the misery of the world — give work to the man who is hungry
and idle and at least give to little children the right to be
born free.
I believe socialism is practical.
You tell me these men out of work are unfit. Under social-
ism they will not be unfit because they will not be overtaxed.
With the idle rich and the idle poor working and the work
day four hours long their bodies will grow strong again and
their minds sane.
There are so many in prison who should be out — with
their minds and bodies given a chance to grow straight.
There are so many out of prison who more deserve to be
inside. There are those who enslave men and women and
little children, paying wages that will not let them live.
It is them and the system under which they live that are
responsible for the men who have been treated like inhuman
things at Sacramento.
— SACRAMENTO (CALIFORNIA) Star, MARCH 16, 1914
57
Introduction to Arrows in the Gale:
Poems by Arturo Giovannitfi
I am glad of this opportunity to commend to the public the
poems of my dear friend and comrade, Arturo Giovannitti.
No one who loves poetry can fail to recognize the greatness
of Giovannitti's expression or to be glad of any force that has
produced such noble verse. He has tried to render his ideas
of the world he lives in. As a poet he is to be judged by his
success in rendering these ideas in verse, and not by his rela-
tions to syndicalism^" or socialism or any other movement in
which he happens to be active. The laws of poetic beauty and
power, not one's beliefs about the economic world, deter-
mine the excellence of his work.
Giovannitti's poety has been called "rashly materialistic."
So is Homer. So is Virgil. So is Dante. So is Shakespeare. So
is Shelley. So are allegories and parables. So are the prophe-
cies of Isaiah. So is the description of the New Jerusalem de-
scending out of Heaven, at once most spirit-illumined and
most closely linked with the natural needs, the sensuous
pleasures and desires of man! When a poet speaks he covers
the bare facts of life with a shimmering cloth of gold. He
spiritualizes all that men see, feel, think, suffer, learn of life's
heights and depths. Giovannitti's poetry is the spiritualization
of a lofty dream that he seeks to realize — the establishment
of love and brotherhood and social justice for every man and
woman upon earth. If you insist on finding in his glorious
imaginings something definite, something translatable into
prose, it is there; it is the struggle of a new world against the
old world, of ideas against customs blindly obeyed, of young
truth against the antiquity of outworn creeds and musty tra-
ditions. Giovannitti is, like Shelley, a poet of revolt against
the cruelty, the poverty, the ignorance which too many of us
accept in blind content. His is the poetry of humane hu-
manity, of exultation in everything new, vigorous, whole-
some, manly, and of uncompromising hatred of what is
bestial, mean, sordid and degrading. It is an outgrowth of
58
Introduction to Arrows in the Gale 59
noble ideals, aspirations and hopes for a true democracy that
are being proclaimed from one end of the world to the other.
Rashly materialistic, indeed!
Behind Arturo Giovannitti stand the poets, prophets, wise
men and patriots of Italy. Into him have been poured the
fire and courage of a proud, energetic people.
He was born January 7, 1884, at Ripabottoni in southern
Italy. He was educated at the lycee in Campobasso. At the age
of 17 he came to America, which he had been taught to
regard as a better, freer country than his own. As he said in
his address before the jury in Salem,^^ he had "learned upon
the knees of his mother and his father to revere with tears in
his eyes the name of 'The Republic' " His first years in
America were years of disillusion and failure. He worked in
the coal mines of Pennsylvania, where he saw the misery and
degradation of many of the foreigners who come here, ani-
mated by the same love for democracy and hope for oppor-
tunity that had filled his heart. He studied for a while in
several theological schools. Then he took up journalistic
work in New York. About nine years ago he joined the
socialist movement and later became the editor of the Italian
revolutionary journal, // Proletario. Pent in by cold and
poverty and still colder tradition, he caught the glow of
the radiance of a redeemed humanity; he bulwarked himself
in his enthusiasm and in the determination that all men shall
have their share in the bounty of the earth, shall know the
splendors and ecstasies of life.
His poetry is inspired by this consecration to a glorious
cause. It is "only living aloud his work, a singing with his
hand." Many readers of it will find themselves face to face
with a baffling personality, with a poet quite unlike any
other. His subjects will puzzle them, and they cannot be
fully understood without some knowledge of the forces which
have given rise to it. Giovannitti's main theme is the class
war, the immediate battleground of which is what we call
labor troubles, the strike, the lock-out, the visible clash be-
tween employer and employed. That battlefield has recently
produced a new type of militant workman, the revolutionary
60 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
unionist, the syndicalist as he is called in most countries, the
member of the Industrial Workers of the World as we have
come to know him in America. Their business today is to
help the workers to win strikes, that is, to force one and
another concession from the masters. Their aim tomorrow is
that of the socialists, to overthrow the master class completely
and win for all men the heritage of the earth. They are cru-
saders, preachers of a new morality whose cardinal virtue
is solidarity, a word scarcely comprehended by those who
have no intimate knowledge of the militant proletariat.
Among the heralds who bear the banner with this strange
new device, solidarity, is Arturo Giovannitti.
He is a poet, a better poet than has come out of the priv-
ileged classes of America in our day. He is also a practical
strike leader and organizer. For his activities during the
Lawrence Strike he spent several months in jail. The crime
with which he was charged was, of course, a legal fiction de-
vised by the mill owners and their agents. Giovannitti's real
crime was helping the strikers in their assault on the pocket-
books of the owners. Of that crime, Giovannitti and all syn-
dicalists are proudly guilty. For it they will be punished, and
they expect to be punished, until the day when they are
stronger than the powers that administer the punishment.
They ask no quarter and they give none. They respect the
law only as a soldier respects an enemy. In the presence of
any law they ask only whether it is expedient — good tactics —
to obey it or break it. They know that the laws are for the
most part made by and for the possessing classes, and that
in a contest with the workers the bosses do not respect the
laws, but quite shamelessly break them. When workers go on
strike for better conditions, the police disperse their meet-
ings, club and imprison them and even drive the leaders
out of town. It is natural that they should do this, for a strike
is not a legal game; it is a war, and both sides use any weapon
that they can lay their hands on. The difference is that the
employers keep up the hypocritical fiction of law and order,
while the revolutionary unionists, who are either more hon-
est or more clear-sighted, point out that law and order do not
Introduction to Arrows in the Gale 61
exist in a world which is at war. From every platform and in
every pamphlet they boldly declare that capitalist morality
is hostile to the interests of the workers and is therefore, from
the worker's point of view, immoral. They preach a new
morality according to which the basest crime is "scabbing,"
and that, as we know, is regarded as a virtue by the upper
classes. They make their own laws in accordance with the
needs of their class, just as throughout history other classes
have done; and they treat statutes, ordinances and injunc-
tions as so many orders from the enemy.
No one has ever given me a good reason why we should
obey unjust laws. But the reason why we should resist them
is obvious. Our resistance proves our manhood and our
womanhood. The dignity of human nature compels us to
resist what we believe to be wrong and a stumbling block to
our fellow men. When a government puts forth its strength
on the side of injustice it is foredoomed to fail. When it de-
pends for "law and order" upon the militia and the police,
its mission in the world is nearly finished. We believe, at least
we hope, that our capitalist government is near its end; we
wish to hasten its end; the only question is how. The various
answers to that question constitute the differences between
the several types or groups of socialists. The capitalist press
is anxious to prove how insignificant is this group of agita-
tors— a handful of discontents, mostly ignorant foreigners.
A handful of discontents? When in the history of the world
has the vanguard been in the majority? Never. People who
are ready to devote their lives to the oppressed, hoping for
no return but a good conscience, are never found in large
numbers at a given time and place. Most men have other
affairs to attend to than their fellowmen's prosperity and hap-
piness. It is not a question of numbers at first, but the spirit
which animates the "handful." But why so persistently dodge
the truth? Why not at least face the fact that a million of the
people of the United States would like to see the present gov-
ernment changed? Why not admit frankly that the creed of
socialism is held by thirty million people in the civilized
world, and is preached and written in sixty languages? The
62 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
foe — if so you regard the emancipation of man from cruel
conditions — is in your midst. Scarcely a hamlet, nay, even a
house, will be found where he does not lurk. Socialism is
here to stay. That is, the idea is here; socialist society has not
yet arrived. Let anyone who will, take the trouble to investi-
gate; and he will find that this idea is a very vigorous
plant, rooted securely in the hearts of men where it does not
depend upon the press for watering and cultivating. Ideas so
planted will bear fruit inevitably. At this very hour the seeds
are being scattered far and wide, and the power does not
exist in the world which can prevent their germination. It is
a plant which it has taken ages to bring to flower. To its
nourishment have gone the best, the finest, the noblest aspi-
rations of humanity.
Such is the wonderful world movement out of which
Arturo Giovannitti is flashing his message of hope to the hu-
man race. It is a movement great in its material and spiritual
possibilities. It is great, very great in the diversity and sweep
of its issues. It is supremely great in the sympathy, mutual
helpfulness and limitless energy of those who are pushing it
forward. It is appealing, it is beautiful in the whole-hearted
efforts to redeem to light, hope, strength and joy the millions
upon whom all the world's burden of anguish and toil has
fallen so pitilessly through the centuries.
Giovannitti's poetry is an effort to express the hopes of a
multitude of men who are lost in an immensity of silence,
swallowed up in meaningless darkness. With burning words
he makes us feel the presence of the toilers hidden behind
tenement walls, behind the machinery they guide. He turns
the full light of his intense, vivid intelligence upon the worn
face of the workers who put every breath and nerve into the
struggle for existence, who give every hour and exhaust every
faculty that others may live. He finds voice for his message
in the sighs, the dumb loves and hopes, the agonies and
thwartings of men who are bowed beneath burdens and
broken by the monster hands of machines, men who spin and
weave and cause the earth to yield its glad increase, men from
whose unheeded stroke uproll domes and spires, till the eyes
Introduction to Arrows in the Gale 63
of men and angels behold among the clouds the work of their
patient hands! But the sense of divine things to be goes thrill-
ing through all his verses. It is as unmistakable as the smell
of spring in April air, and just as pervasive, just as elemental.
He welcomes the combat — not a combat that shall rend the
world apart, but one which shall bring it together in a uni-
versal sunshine of peace. "The battle has gone up onto
higher ground and into higher light; the battle is above
the clouds." In the irregular lines of such poems as "The
Cage" there is the tramp of a vast, onrushing host. It is the
high tide of the revoluton. Onward it sweeps through the
rent temples of the past, flooding the courts of dethroned
state, thundering through the market-place where men buy
and sell the lives and souls of their fellow men. Face the
wreckage, you who can, and behold upon the tumultuous
waves a new ship of state. Fast through the night of our igno-
rance and our fear it speeds on to the calm, sunlit shores of
the desired land.
I am sure this book will go on its way thrilling to new
courage those who fight for freedom. It will set human
hearts beating for something better. It will move some to
think and keep them glad that they thought. Its echoes
caught from a noble life, a noble fight will "roll from soul to
soul/And grow forever and forever."
— I9I4
Why Men Need Woman Suffrage
Many declare that the woman peril is at our door. I have
no doubt that it is. Indeed, I suspect that it has already en-
tered most households. Certainly a great number of men are
facing it across the breakfast table. And no matter how deaf
they pretend to be, they cannot help hearing it talk.
Women insist on their "divine rights," "immutable rights,"
"inalienable rights." These phrases are not so sensible as one
might wish. When one comes to think of it, there are no such
things as divine, immutable or inalienable rights. Rights are
things we get when we are strong enough to make good our
claim to them. Men spent hundreds of years and did much
hard fighting to get the rights they now call divine, immu-
table and inalienable. Today women are demanding rights
that tomorrow nobody will be foolhardy enough to question.
Anyone that reads intelligently knows that some of our old
ideas are up a tree, and that traditions are scurrying away
before the advance of their everlasting enemy, the question-
ing mind of a new age. It is time to take a good look at
human affairs in the light of new conditions and new ideas,
and the tradition that man is the natural master of the des-
tiny of the race is one of the first to suffer investigation.
The dullest can see that a good many things are wrong
with the world. It is old-fashioned, running into ruts. We
lack intelligent direction and control. We are not getting the
most out of our opportunities and advantages. We must make
over the scheme of life, and new tools are needed for the
work. Perhaps one of the chief reasons for the present chaotic
condition of things is that the world has been trying to get
along with only half of itself. Everywhere we see running to
waste woman-force that should be utilized in making the
world a more decent home for humanity. Let us see how the
votes of women will help solve the problem of living wisely
and well.
When women vote men will no longer be compelled to
64
Why Men Need Woman Suffrage 65
guess at their desires — and guess wrong. Women will be able
to protect themselves from man-made laws that are antago-
nistic to their interests. Some persons like to imagine that
man's chivalrous nature will constrain him to act humanely
toward woman and protect her rights. Some men do protect
some women. We demand that all women have the right to
protect themselves and relieve man of this feudal responsi-
bility.
Political power shapes the affairs of state and determines
many of the every-day relations of human beings with one
another. The citizen with a vote is master of his own destiny.
Women without this power, and who do not happen to have
"natural protectors," are at the mercy of man-made laws.
And experience shows that these laws are often unjust to
them. Legislation made to protect women who have fathers
and husbands to care for them does not protect working
women whose only defenders are the state's policemen.
The wages of women in some states belong to their fathers
or their husbands. They cannot hold property. In parts of this
enlightened democracy of men the father is the sole owner
of the child. I believe he can even will away the unborn
babies. Legislation concerning the age of consent is another
proof that the voice of woman is mute in the halls of the
lawmakers. The regulations affecting laboring women are a
proof that men are too busy to protect their "natural wards."
Economic urgencies have driven women to demand the
vote. To a large number of women is entrusted the vitally
important public function of training all childhood. Yet it
is frequently impossible for teachers to support themselves
decently on their wages. What redress have these overworked,
underpaid women without the vote? They count for nothing
p>olitically.
An organizaton of women recently wanted to obtain a wel-
fare measure from a Legislature in New York. A petition
signed by 5,000 women was placed before the chairman of a
committee that was to report on the bill. He said it was a
good bill and ought to pass. After the women had waited a
reasonable time, they sent up a request to know what had
66 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
become of the bill. The chairman said he did not know any-
thing about it. He was reminded of the petition that had
been brought to him signed by 5,000 women. "Oh," replied
the chairman, "a petition signed by 5,000 women is not worth
the paper it is written on. Get five men to sign and we'll do
something about it." That is one reason we demand the
vote — we want 5,000 women to count for more than five men.
A majority of women that need the vote are wage-earners.
A tremendous change has taken place in the industrial world
since power machines took the place of hand tools. Men and
women have been compelled to adjust themselves to a new
system of production and distribution. The machine has been
used to exploit the labor of both men and women as it was
never exploited before. In the terrific struggle for existence
that has resulted from this change women and children suffer
even more than men. Indeed, economic pressure drives many
women to market their sex.
Yet women have nothing to say about conditions under
which they live and toil. Helpless, unheeded, they must
endure hardships that lead to misery and degradation. They
may not lift a hand to defend themselves against cruel, crip-
pling processes that stunt the body and brain and bring on
early death or premature old age.
Working men suffer from the helplessness of working
women. They must compete in the same offices and factories
with women who are unable to protect themselves with
proper laws. They must compete with women who work in
unsanitary rooms called homes, work by dim lamps in the
night, rocking a cradle with one foot. It is to the interest of
all workers to end this stupid, one-sided, one-power arrange-
ment and have suffrage for all.
The laws made by men rule the minds as well as the bodies
of women. The man-managed state so conducts its schools
that the ideals of women are warped to hideous shapes. Gov-
ernments and schools engender and nourish a militant public
opinion that makes war always possible. Man-written history,
fiction and poetry glorify war. Love of country is turned into
patriotism which suggests drums, flags and young men eager
Why Men Need Woman Suffrage 67
to give their lives to the rulers of the nation. There will con-
tinue to be wars so long as our schools make such ideas
prevail.
Women know the cost of human life in terms of suffering
and sacrifice as men can never know it. I believe women
would use the ballot to prevent war and to destroy the ideas
that make war possible. In spite of an education that has
taught them to glorify the military element in their ideals of
manhood, they will wake to the realization that he loves his
country best who lives for it and serves it faithfully. They
will teach children to honor the heroes of peace above the
heroes of war.
Women are even now more active in working for social
legislation and laws affecting the schools, the milk supply
and the quality of food than are the men who have the votes.
Fundamentally, woman is a more social being than man. She
is concerned with the whole family, while man is more indi-
vidualistic. Social consciousness is not so strong in him. Many
questions can be solved only with the help of woman's social
experience — questions of the safety of women in their work,
the rights of little children.
Yet her peculiar knowledge and abilities are made the basis
of arguments against giving women the vote. It is indisputably
true that woman is constituted for the purposes of maternity.
So is man constituted for the purposes of paternity. But no
one seems to think that incapacitates him for citizenship. If
there is a fundamental difference between man and woman,
far be it from me to deny that it exists. It is all the more rea-
son why her side should be heard.
For my part, I should think that man's chivalrous nature
would cause him to emancipate the weaker half of the race.
Indeed, it seems strange that when he was getting the suffrage
for himself it did not occur to him to divide up with his be-
loved partner. Looking closer, I almost detect a suspicion of
tyranny in his attitude toward her on the suffrage question.
And can it be that this tyranny wears the mask of chivalry?
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not disparaging chiv-
alry. It is a very fine thing — what there is of it. The trouble
68 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
is, there is not enough to go around. Nearly all the oppor-
tunities, educational and political, that woman has acquired
have been gained by a march of conquest with a skirmish at
every post.
So since masculine chivalry has failed us we must hustle a
bit and see what we can do for ourselves — and the men who
need our suffrage. First of all, we must organize. We must
make ourselves so aggressive a political factor that our natural
protectors can no longer deny us a voice in directing and
shaping the laws under which we must live.
We shall not see the end of capitalism and the triumph of
democracy until men and women work together in the solv-
ing of their political, social and economic problems. I realize
that the vote is only one of many weapons in our fight for the
freedom of all. But every means is precious and, equipped
with the vote, men and women together will hasten the day
when the age-long dream of liberty, equality and brother-
hood shall be realized upon earth.
NEW YORK Call, OCTOBER 17, 1915
To President Woodrow Wilson: Joe Hill
I believe that Joseph Hillstrom has not had a fair trial and
that the sentence passed upon him is unjust.^^ I appeal to you
as official father of all the people to use your great power and
influence to save one of the nation's helpless sons. The stay
of execution will give time to investigate. A new trial will
give the man justice to which the laws of the land entitle him.
NOVEMBER 16, 1915, WOODROW WILSON PAPERS, UBRARY OF
CONGRESS
69
Birth Control
The case of William Sanger, whose wife formed the Birth
Control League, should open the eyes of all intelligent per-
sons to the forces at work against the spread of this new idea.
A short time ago Sanger was giving away a pamphlet. Family
Limitation, that his wife had written.^^ It was her answer to
many appeals for information from men and women who
could not support their families and who could not pay a
competent physician for the information they wanted. Its
purpose was to help distressed parents to limit the number
of their offspring and give a better chance of health and hap-
piness to the children they did have.
Now, most of those who have large families are working
people. Why should not the idea of having fewer children be
fostered among them?
The imprisonment of Sanger reveals the fact that there are
persons who do not want this idea to be disseminated among
the workers. These persons, for the sake of profits alone, de-
liberately encourage the workers to have large families, that
their little ones may be driven to labor — that the factories
shall have them — to the end that there shall be no dearth of
hands and, therefore, plenty of people to take such wages as
are offered to them.
Incredible as it seems, employers of others' brains and
bodies may, and do, claim a right over their lives, the frail
limbs and tender souls of others' progeny — for profit. To
such persons the knowledge about birth control is odious.
The limiting of families is a matter of the gravest necessity
to the workers. In spite of our boasts of national prosperity,
poverty is steadily increasing. The cost of living mounts
higher and higher, and wages do not advance in proportion.
If the families of the workers are left to the uncontrolled
caprice of nature, we shall have a larger percentage of chil-
dren that are forced to toil in mills and factories — who are
denied their birthright of education and play.
70
Birth Control 71
Already countless mothers are obliged to work outside
their homes and leave their little ones without the proper
care. Unwatched, exposed to all the influences of evil, these
children of the poor grow or waste away, as they may, like
plants in sandy soil, among rocks, weeds and rubbish, bereft of
light and sunshine. Those that survive bring into the world,
in spite of themselves, an even larger number of deformed,
sickly, feebleminded children. And the incalculable mischief
of an uncontrolled birth rate sucks up the vitality of the
human race. This is the real suicide that we must combat.
The destruction of the poor is their poverty. Only by
taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands
can they roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping
over them and their children.
Anyone who will take a peep into life's backyard will see
a huge junk heap that will set him thinking.
Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and
be fruitful, if the race was to survive. But now, to preserve
the race, it is necessary that people hold back the power of
propagation.
NEW YORK Call, NOVEMBER 26, 1915
The Ford Peace Plan is Doomed to Failure
Henry Ford belongs to the same class as the diplomats and
politicians that made the war. Nothing will come of his
plan,^^ because he won't use the only means to make it a suc-
cess— get the soldiers themselves to quit fighting.
The Roman peace was a failure, the truce of God was only
a truce, and the treaties of governments end in new wars. It
is time to sweep aside these artificial peacemakers and declare
the peace of man. If the soldiers in the trenches once under-
stood that their victories belong to their governments, but
their miseries are their own, they will cease to fight at the
bidding of an officer backed by an official.
They will put their hands in their pyockets and go home. If
the Kaiser and the Czar and a group of Presidents and Kings
are interested in a quarrel about a line fence, the workers
they have turned into soldiers will let them have their fight
out among themselves.
NEW YORK Call, DECEMBER 16, 1915
72
Menace of the Militarist Program
Speech at the Labor Forum, Washington Irving High
School, New York City, December 19, 1913^^
The burden of war always falls heaviest on the toilers.
They are taught that their masters can do no wrong, and go
out in vast numbers to be killed on the battlefield. And what
is their reward? If they escape death they come back to face
heavy taxation and have their burden of poverty doubled.
Through all the ages they have been robbed of the just re-
wards of their patriotism as they have been of the just reward
of their labor.
The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capital-
ist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It
compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it
will not sacrifice for gain. During a war, the sanctity of a
home, and even of private property is destroyed. Govern-
ments do what it is said the "crazy Socialists" would do if in
power.
In spite of the historical proof of the futility of war, the
United States is preparing to raise a billion dollars and a mil-
lion soldiers in preparation for war. Behind the active agita-
tors for defense you will find J. P. Morgan & Co., and the
capitalists who have invested their money in shrapnel plants,
and others that turn out implements of murder. They want
armaments because they beget war, for these capitalists want
to develop new markets for their hideous traffic.
I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every
war has to me a horror of a family feud. I look upon true
patriotism as the brotherhood of man and the service of all
to all. The only fighting that saves is the one that helps the
world toward liberty, justice and an abundant life for all.
To prepare this nation in the true sense of the word, not
for war, but for peace and happiness, the State should govern
every department of industry, health and education in such
a way as to maintain the bodies and minds of the people in
73
74 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
soundness and efficiency. Then, the nation will be prepared
to withstand the demand to fight for a perpetuation of its
own slavery at the bidding of a tyrant.
After all, the best preparedness is one that disarms the
hostility of other nations and makes friends of them. Nothing
is to be gained by the workers from war. They suffer all the
miseries, while the rulers reap the rewards. Their wages are
not increased, nor their toil made lighter, nor their homes
made more comfortable. The army they are supposed to raise
can be used to break strikes as well as defend the people.
If the democratic measures of preparedness fall before the
advance of a world empire, the worker has nothing to fear.
No conqueror can beat down his wages more ruthlessly or
oppress him more than his own fellow citizens of the capitalist
world are doing. The worker has nothing to lose but his
chains, and he has a world to win. He can win it at one stroke
from a world empire. We must form a fully equipped, mili-
tant international union so that we can take possession of
such a world empire.
This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you
are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while
the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to
fight for? National independence? That means the masters'
independence. The laws that send you to jail when you de-
mand better living conditions? The flag? Does it wave over
a country where you are free and have a home, or does it
rather symbolize a country that meets you with clenched
fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours?
Will you fight for your masters' religion which teaches you
to obey them even when they tell you to kill one another?
Why don't you make a junk heap of your masters' religion,
his civilization, his kings and his customs that tend to reduce
a man to a brute and God to a monster? Let there go forth
a clarion call for liberty. Let the workers form one great
world-wide union, and let there be a globe-encircling revolt
to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness.
— new YORK Call, DECEMBER 20, 1915
Strike Against War
Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, January 5 ,
1916, under the auspices of the Women's Peace Party
and the Labor Forum^^
To begin with, I have a word to say to my good friends,
the editors, and others who are moved to pity me. Some
people are grieved because they imagine I am in the hands of
unscrupulous persons who lead me astray and persuade me
to espouse unpopular causes and make me the mouthpiece
of their propaganda. Now, let it be understood once and for
all that I do not want their pity; I would not change places
with one of them. I know what I am talking about. My
sources of information are as good and reliable as anybody
else's. I have papers and magazines from England, France,
Germany and Austria that I can read myself. Not all the
editors I have met can do that. Quite a number of them have
to take their French and German second hand. No, I will not
disparage the editors. They are an overworked, misunder-
stood class. Let them remember, though, that if I cannot see
the fire at the end of their cigarettes, neither can they thread
a needle in the dark. All I ask, gentlemen, is a fair field and
no favor. I have entered the fight against preparedness and
against the economic system under which we live. It is to be
a fight to the finish, and I ask no quarter.
The future of the world rests in the hands of America, The
future of America rests on the backs of 80,000,000 working
men and women and their children. We are facing a grave
crisis in our national life. The few who profit from the labor
of the masses want to organize the workers into an army
which will protect the interests of the capitalists. You are
urged to add to the heavy burdens you already bear the
burden of a larger army and many additional warships. It is
in your power to refuse to carry the artillery and the dread-
noughts and to shake off some of the burdens, too, such as
limousines, steam yachts and country estates. You do not
75
76 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
need to make a great noise about it. With the silence and
dignity of creators you can end wars and the system of selfish-
ness and exploitation that causes wars. All you need to do
to bring about this stupendous revolution is to straighten up
and fold your arms.
We are not preparing to defend our country. Even if we
were as helpless as Congressman Gardner says we are, we
have no enemies foolhardy enough to attempt to invade the
United States. The talk about attack from Germany and
Japan is absurd. Germany has its hands full and will be busy
with its own affairs for some generations after the European
war is over.
With full control of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediter-
ranean Sea, the allies failed to land enough men to defeat
the Turks at Gallipoli; and then they failed again to land an
army at Salonica in time to check the Bulgarian invasion of
Serbia. The conquest of America by water is a nightmare
confined exclusively to ignorant persons and members of the
Navy League.
Yet, everywhere, we hear fear advanced as argument for
armament. It reminds me of a fable I read. A certain man
found a horseshoe. His neighbor began to weep and wail be-
cause, as he justly pointed out, the man who found the horse-
shoe might someday find a horse. Having found the shoe, he
might shoe him. The neighbor's child might some day go so
near the horse's heels as to be kicked, and die. Undoubtedly
the two families would quarrel and fight, and several valuable
lives would be lost through the finding of the horseshoe. You
know the last war we had we quite accidentally picked up
some islands in the Pacific Ocean which may some day be
the cause of a quarrel between ourselves and Japan.^'^ I'd
rather drop those islands right now and forget about them
than go to war to keep them. Wouldn't you?
Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the
United States. It is planning to protect the capital of Ameri-
can speculators and investors in Mexico, South America,
China and the Philippine Islands. Incidentally this prepara-
Strike Against War 77
tion will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war
machines.
Until recently there were uses in the United States for the
money taken from the workers. But American labor is ex-
ploited almost to the limit now, and our national resources
have all been appropriated. Still the profits keep piling up
new capital. Our flourishing industry in implements of mur-
der is filling the vaults of New York's banks with gold. And
a dollar that is not being used to make a slave of some human
being is not fulfilling its purpose in the capitalistic scheme.
That dollar must be invested in South America, Mexico,
China, or the Philippines.
It was no accident that the Navy League came into promi-
nence at the same time that the National City Bank of New
York established a branch in Buenos Aires. It is not a mere
coincidence that six business associates of J. P. Morgan are
officials of defense leagues. And chance did not dictate that
Mayor Mitchel should appoint to his Committee of Safety a
thousand men that represent a fifth of the wealth of the
United States.^* These men want their foreign investments
protected.
Every modem war has had its root in exploitation. The
Civil War was fought to decide whether the slaveholders of
the South or the capitalists of the North should exploit the
West. The Spanish-American War decided that the United
States should exploit Cuba and the Philippines. The South
African War decided that the British should exploit the
diamond mines. The Russo-Japanese War decided that Japan
should exploit Korea. The present war is to decide who shall
exploit the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, China,
Africa. And we are whetting our sword to scare the victors
into sharing the spoils with us. Now, the workers are not in-
terested in the spoils; they will not get any of them anyway.
The preparedness propagandists have still another object,
and a very important one. They want to give the people
something to think about besides their own unhappy con-
dition. They know the cost of living is high, wages are low,
employment is uncertain and will be much more so when
78 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
the European call for munitions stops. No matter how hard
and incessantly the people work, they often cannot afford the
comforts of life; many cannot obtain the necessities.
Every few days we are given a new war scare to lend realism
to their propaganda. They have had us on the verge of war
over the Lusitania, the Gulfiight, the Ancona, and now they
want the workingmen to become excited over the sinking of
the Persia?^ The workingman has no interest in any of these
ships. The Germans might sink every vessel on the Atlantic
Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and kill Americans with
every one — the American workingman would still have no
reason to go to war.
All the machinery of the system has been set in motion.
Above the complaint and din of the protest from the workers
is heard the voice of authority.
'Triends," it says, "fellow workmen, patriots; your country
is in danger! There are foes on all sides of us. There is noth-
ing between us and our enemies except the Pacific Ocean and
the Atlantic Ocean. Look at what has happened to Belgium.
Consider the fate of Serbia. Will you murmur about low
wages when your country, your very liberties, are in jeopardy?
What are the miseries you endure compared to the humilia-
tion of having a victorious German army sail up the East
River? Quit your whining, get busy and prepare to defend
your firesides and your flag. Get an army, get a navy; be
ready to meet the invaders like the loyal-hearted freemen
you are."
Will the workers walk into this trap? Will they be fooled
again? I am afraid so. The people have always been amena-
ble to oratory of this sort. The workers know they have no
enemies except their masters. They know that their citizen-
ship papers are no warrant for the safety of themselves or
their wives and children. They know that honest sweat, per-
sistent toil and years of struggle bring them nothing worth
holding on to, worth fighting for. Yet, deep down in their
foolish hearts they believe they have a country. Oh blind
vanity of slaves!
The clever ones, up in the high places know how childish
Strike Against War 79
and silly the workers are. They know that if the government
dresses them up in khaki and gives them a rifle and starts
them off with a brass band and waving banners, they will go
forth to fight valiantly for their own enemies. They are taught
that brave men die for their country's honor. What a price
to pay for an abstraction — the lives of millions of young men;
other millions crippled and blinded for life; existence made
hideous for still more millions of human beings; the achieve-
ment and inheritance of generations swept away in a mo-
ment— and nobody better off for all the misery! This terrible
sacrifice would be comprehensible if the thing you die for
and call country fed, clothed, housed and warmed you, edu-
cated and cherished your children. I think the workers are
the most unselfish of the children of men; they toil and live
and die for other people's country, other people's sentiments,
other people's liberties and other people's happiness! The
workers have no liberties of their own; they are not free when
they are compelled to work twelve or ten or eight hours a day.
They are not free when they are ill paid for their exhausting
toil. They are not free when their children must labor in
mines, mills and factories or starve, and when their women
may be driven by poverty to lives of shame. They are not free
when they are clubbed and imprisoned because they go on
strike for a raise of wages and for the elemental justice that
is their right as human beings.
We are not free unless the men who frame and execute the
laws represent the interests of the lives of the people and no
other interest. The ballot does not make a free man out of a
wage slave. There has never existed a truly free and demo-
cratic nation in the world. From time immemorial men have
followed with blind loyalty the strong men who had the
power of money and of armies. Even while battlefields were
piled high with their own dead they have tilled the lands of
the rulers and have been robbed of the fruits of their labor.
They have built palaces and pyramids, temples and cathedrals
that held no real shrine of liberty.
As civilization has grown more complex the workers have
become more and more enslaved, until today they are little
80 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
more than parts of the machines they operate. Daily they face
the dangers of railroad, bridge, skyscraper, freight train,
stokehold, stockyard, lumber raft and mine. Panting and
straining at the docks, on the railroads and underground and
on the seas, they move the traffic and pass from land to land
the precious commodities that make it possible for us to live.
And what is their reward? A scanty wage, often poverty, rents,
taxes, tributes and war indemnities.
The kind of preparedness the workers want is reorganiza-
tion and reconstruction of their whole life, such as has never
been attempted by statesmen or governments. The Germans
found out years ago that they could not raise good soldiers
in the slums so they abolished the slums. They saw to it that
all the people had at least a few of the essentials of civiliza-
tion— decent lodging, clean streets, wholesome if scanty food,
proper medical care and proper safeguards for the workers
in their occupations. That is only a small part of what should
be done, but what wonders that one step toward the right
sort of preparedness has wrought for Germany! For eighteen
months it has kept itself free from invasion while carrying
on an extended war of conquest, and its armies are still press-
ing on with unabated vigor. It is your business to force these
reforms on the Administration. Let there be no more talk
about what a government can or cannot do. All these things
have been done by all the belligerent nations in the hurly-
burly of war. Every fundamental industry has been managed
better by the governments than by private corporations.
It is your duty to insist upon still more radical measures.
It is your business to see that no child is employed in an
industrial establishment or mine or store, and that no worker
is needlessly exposed to accident or disease. It is your business
to make them give you clean cities, free from smoke, dirt and
congestion. It is your business to make them pay you a living
wage. It is your business to see that this kind of preparedness
is carried into every department of the nation, until every
one has a chance to be well born, well nourished, rightly edu-
cated, intelligent and serviceable to the country at all times.
Strike against all ordinances and laws and institutions that
Strike Against War 81
continue the slaughter of peace and the butcheries of war.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.
Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all
other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means
death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb,
obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an
army of construction.
— NEW YORK Call, JANUARY 6, 1916
Why I Became an IWW
An Interview, written by Barbara Bindley
I asked that Miss Keller relate the steps by which she
turned into the uncompromising radical who now faces the
world as Helen Keller, not the sweet sentimentalist of
woman's magazine days.
"I was religious to start with," she began in enthusiastic
acquiescence to my request. "I had thought blindness a mis-
fortune."
"Then I was appointed on a commission to investigate the
conditions among the blind. For the first time I, who had
thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found
that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial con-
ditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of em-
ployers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found
that poverty drove women to the life of shame that ended in
blindness.
"Then I read H. G. Wells' Old Worlds for New, summaries
of Karl Marx's philosophy and his manifestoes. It seemed as
if I had been asleep and waked to a new world — a world so
different from the beautiful world I had lived in.
"For a time I was depressed" — her voice saddened in rem-
iniscence— "but little by little my confidence came back and
I realized that the wonder is not that conditions are so bad,
but that humanity has advanced so far in spite of them. And
now I am in the fight to change things. I may be a dreamer,
but dreamers are necessary to make facts!" Her voice almost
shrilled in its triumph, and her hand found and clutched my
knee in vibrant emphasis.
"And you feel happier than in the beautiful make-believe
world you had dreamed?" I questioned.
"Yes," she answered with firm finality in the voice which
stumbles a little. "Reality even when it is sad is better than
illusions." (This from a woman [for] whom it would seem all
earthly things are but that.) "Illusions are at the mercy of
82
Why I Became an IWW 83
any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within,
from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men — and of
that I have more than I ever had."
"And all this had to come after you left college? Did you
get none of this knowledge of life at college?"
"No!" — an emphatic, triumphant, almost terrifying denial
— "college isn't the place to go for any ideas.
"I thought I was going to college to be educated," she re-
sumed as she composed herself, and laughing more lightly,
"I am an example of the education dealt out to present
generations. It's a deadlock. Schools seem to love the dead
past and live in it."
"But you know, don't you," I pleaded through Mrs. Macy
and for her, "that the intentions of your teachers were of the
best."
"But they amounted to nothing," she countered. "They
did not teach me about things as they are today, or about the
vital problems of the people. They taught me Greek drama
and Roman history, the celebrated achievements of war
rather than those of the heroes of peace. For instance, there
were a dozen chapters on war where there were a few para-
graphs about the inventors, and it is this overemphasis of the
cruelties of life that breeds the wrong ideal. Education taught
me that it was a finer thing to be a Napoleon than to create
a new potato.
"It is my nature to fight as soon as I see wrongs to be made
right. So after I read Wells and Marx and learned what I
did, I joined a Socialist branch. I made up my mind to do
something. And the best thing seemed to join a fighting party
and help their propaganda. That was four years ago. I have
been an industrialist since."
"An industrialist?" I asked, surprised out of composure.
"You don't mean an IWW — a syndicalist?"
"I became an IWW because I found out that the Socialist
party was too slow. It is sinking in the political bog. It is
almost, if not quite, impossible for the party to keep its
revolutionary character so long as it occupies a place under
the government and seeks office under it. The government
84 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
does not stand for interests the Socialist party is supposed to
represent."
Socialism, however, is a step in the right direction, she
conceded to her dissenting hearers.
"The true task is to unite and organize all workers on an
economic basis, and it is the workers themselves who must
secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong." Miss
Keller continued. "Nothing can be gained by political action.
That is why I became an IWW."
"What particular incident led you to become an IWW" I
interrupted.
"The Lawrence strike.^^ Why? Because I discovered that
the true idea of the IWW is not only to better conditions, to
get them for all people, but to get them at once."
"What are you committed to — education or revolution?"
"Revolution." She answered decisively. "We can't have
education without revolution. We have tried peace education
for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see
what it will do now.
"I am not for peace at all hazards. I regret this war, but I
have never regretted the blood of the thousands spilled dur-
ing the French Revolution. And the workers are learning
how to stand alone. They are learning a lesson they will apply
to their own good out in the trenches. Generals testify to the
splendid initiative the workers in the trenches take. If they
can do that for their masters you can be sure they will do
that for themselves when they have taken matters into their
own hands.
"And don't forget workers are getting their discipline in
the trenches," Miss Keller continued. "They are acquiring
the will to combat.
"My cause will emerge from the trenches stronger than it
ever was. Under the obvious battle waging there, there is an
invisible battle for the freedom of man."
Again the advisability of printing all this here set forth.
And this finally from the patience-exhausted, gentle little
woman:
"I don't give a damn about semi-radicals 1"
Why I Became an IWW 85
Gradually, through the talk, Helen Keller's whole being
had taken on a glow, and it was in keeping with the exalted
look on her face and the glory in her sightless blue eyes that
she told me:
"I feel like Joan of Arc at times. My whole becomes up-
lifted. I, too, hear the voices that say 'Come,' and I will fol-
low, no matter what the cost, no matter what the trials I am
placed under. Jail, poverty, calumny — they matter not. Truly
He has said, 'Woe unto you that permits the least of mine
to suffer.' "
— NEW YORK Tribune, January 16, 191631
To the New York Call
No matter how much it costs us to do it, we must keep
the Call kicking. The only way we can smash the system is
by telling the truth about it, telling the truth in print. We
need a Socialist daily newspaper in every city in the coun-
try, and a Socialist press association with live reports on the
spot to give us the facts about every battle of the class strug-
gle. The Call is an advance herald of the army of truth — and
we cannot afford to have it worrying about bread and butter.
I am sending a check for $50 worth of bonds^^ — ^j^st now it
is all I can spare — and I hope the whole stock-bond, rent-
interest-and-profit system is out of business before they fall
due. Yours for a bigger Call,
NEW YORK Call, SEPTEMBER 7, 1916
86
The New Woman's Party
For the first time in the history of America women have
become a great factor in the selection of a Presidential candi-
date and the creation of a party's platform. They are seen
everywhere in Chicago in these convention discussions, where
a very few years ago their appearance would have caused un-
told comment. And their influence is affecting every "deal"
that the politicians are making. Greatest of all they have just
formed a "woman's party, "^^ the birth of which I saw as it
started winging its way down the ages.
What does all this mean?
What message does this hold for the women of America —
of the world? The Woman's Party means more than votes for
women. It is the symbol of our solidarity. It stands for the
best national efforts of American women. It embodies the
aspirations of millions of intelligent women — women who
think and have enlightened opinions. It focuses our struggle
for independence.
The Woman's Party stands for Woman First. It means an
individual allegiance to our ideal — the ideal of sex equality
and responsibility.
It means more and more united, effective co-operation.
Women have discovered that they cannot rely on man's
chivalry to give them justice — ^just as men before them found
out that we cannot be saved by other people — we must save
ourselves.
Man has fought hard for the extension of his franchise; it
has sometimes caused bloodshed. Today women are met with
the same arguments that were used against the political
emancipation of men. It was argued by the masters that the
propertyless mob was not competent to vote; that they did not
want the vote; that only a few noisy demagogues were stirring
the people and filling their heads with foolishness. The idea
that they were capable of taking intelligent interest in politi-
cal questions was ridiculed.
87
88 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
But no ridicule, no argument, no force could daunt those
who fought for manhood suffrage.
The justice of our cause is as obvious, as compelling, as
theirs. Our need to take part in controlling the affairs of the
world is imperative. The love of power is strong in the human
breast, and men, having once secured their suffrage, will keep
it for themselves until we force them to extend it to women.
The time is ripe for us; there are now four million women
voters in the United States. The party that turns them down
is dead politically. Of course, our victory is not won; we shall
have to work long and endure much before our dreams are
realized. But the new Woman's party will give the two old
parties a jolt at the Presidential election that will set them
thinking and acting.
At every stage of history there comes a moment when de-
cisive action brings all the struggles of the past into realiza-
tion. This is one of those moments in the nation's life and in
the life of women.
NEW YORK Call, JUNE 9, 1916
To Morris Hillquit'*
I have refrained from writing, or giving utterance to the
fierce protest in my heart against the war madness that is
sweeping away the reason and common sense of our people,
because I believed that President Wilson would defend our
liberties and stay with his strong hand the forces that are in-
vading them. I have waited and waited for some word from
the White House. I have prayed and hoped against hope that
today, tomorrow or next day the newspapers would contain
a rebuke that would bring the nation back to sanity and
tolerance. I have read and read President Wilson's own lofty
utterance about freedom, justice and the rights of the people
against the rights of governments. I thought he must realize
that the Trading With the Enemy Act^^ does not differ essen-
tially from the drastic measure which the Federalists of 1798
rushed through Congress.^^ In the quiet of his study he wrote
that the Sedition Act cut perilously near the root of freedom
of speech and of the press. He saw clearly that there was no
telling where such power would stop. Who can tell where the
power given by the Trading With the Enemy Act will stop —
an act that makes the Postmaster General absolute dictator
over the press, an act that renders it impossible for any publi-
cation criticizing any measure of the government to circulate
through the mails, be sent by express or freight, or sold . . .
Now you know, and the voters of New York know, when
they are in their right minds, that it is neither treasonable
nor seditious to criticize any statute or law. Nor is it treason-
able to agitate for the repeal of any act. We are within our
constitutional rights as citizens to agitate for the abolition of
conscription. Why should we give up the best things we have,
freedom of speech, of the press and of assemblage and estab-
lish Kaiserism in this country while we send our armies to
destroy it in Europe? I am not discussing the war, its causes,
its origin, its righteousness or unrighteousness, or whether
the Christian spirit is eternally opposed to it or not.
I am not opposed to war for sentimental reasons. The
89
90 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
blood of fighting ancestors flows in my veins. I would gladly
see our young men go forth to battle if I thought it was a
battle for true freedom. I would gladly participate in a war
that would really make the world safe for democracy. By
making the world safe for democracy I do not mean simply
to put down autocracy in Germany. . . .
I do not know if your election would bring about a speedy
peace. But I do know that it would encourage us to look for-
ward to a people's peace — a peace without victory, a peace
without conquests or indemnities. I would that a large vote
cast for you would be a strong protest against the Prussian
militarism that is taking possession of our government. It
would be an unequivocal denial that New York City stands
for the kind of democracy that prevails here just now, a
democracy where freedom of assemblage is denied the people,
a democracy where armed officials behave like thugs, forcibly
dispersing meetings, burning literature and clubbing the
people; a democracy where workingmen are arrested and
imprisoned for exercising their right to strike, a democracy
where the miners of Bisbee were torn from their homes,
huddled in freight cars like cattle, flung upon a desert with-
out food or water and left to die;^'^ a democracy where
Negroes may be massacred and their property burned, as was
done in East St. Louis;^^ a democracy where lynching and
child labor are tolerated, a democracy where a minister who
follows the feet of the Messenger of Peace beautiful upon the
earth was flogged almost to death, and the only comment of
the press upon this outrage was a series of facetious re-
marks, and a half-concealed approval of the "hot-headed
Kentuckians whose earnestness and patriotism carried them
a little too far."
If I had the right to vote, I would vote for you, Mr.
Hillquit, because a vote for you would be a blow at the mili-
tarism that is one of the chief bulwarks of capitalism, and
the day that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fall.
NEW YORK Call, NOVEMBER 5, 1917
What is the IWW?
Speech at the New York City Civic Club, January 1918
I am going to talk about the Industrial Workers of the
World because they are so much in the public eye just now.
They are probably the most hated and most loved organiza-
tion in existence. Certainly they are the least understood and
the most persistenly misrepresented.
The Industrial Workers of the World is a labor union
based on the class struggle. It admits only wage-earners, and
acts on the principle of industrial unionism. Its battleground
is the field of industry. The visible expression of the battle is
the strike, the lock-out, the clash between employer and em-
ployed. It is a movement of revolt against the ignorance, the
poverty, the cruelty that too many of us accept in blind
content.
It was founded in 1905 by men of bitter experience in the
labor struggle,^^ and in 1909 it began to attract nation-wide
attention. The McKees Rocks strike first brought it to no-
tice. The textile strike of Lawrence, Massachusetts, the silk
workers' strike of Paterson, New Jersey, and the miners'
strike of Calumet, Michigan, made it notorious.^" Since 1909
it has been a militant force in America that employers have
had to reckon with.
It differs from the trade unions in that it emphasizes the
idea of one big union of all industries in the economic field.
It points out that the trade unions as presently organized are
an obstacle to unity among the masses, and that this lack of
solidarity plays into the hands of their economic masters.
The IWW's affirm as a fundamental principle that the
creators of wealth are entitled to all they create. Thus they
find themselves pitted against the whole profit-making system.
They declare that there can be no compromise so long as the
majority of the working class lives in want while the master
class lives in luxury. They insist that there can be no peace
until the workers organize as a class, take possession of the
91
92 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
resources of the earth and the machinery of production and
distribution and abolish the wage system. In other words, the
workers in their collectivity must own and operate all the
essential industrial institutions and secure to each laborer the
full value of his product.
It is for these principles, this declaration of class solidarity,
that the IWWs are being persecuted, beaten, imprisoned,
murdered.^^ If the capitalist class had the sense it is reputed
to have, it would know that violence is the worst weapon
that can be used against men who have nothing to lose and
the world to gain.
Let me tell you something about the IWWs as I see them.
They are the unskilled, the ill-paid, the unnaturalized, the
submerged part of the working class. They are mostly com-
posed of textile mill workers, lumber men, harvesters, miners,
transport workers. We are told that they are "foreigners,"
"the scum of the earth," "dangerous."
Many of them are foreigners simply because the greater
part of the unskilled labor in this country is foreign. "Scum
of the earth?" Perhaps. I know they have never had a fair
chance. They have been starved in body and mind, denied,
exploited, driven like slaves from job to job. "Dangerous?"
Maybe. They have endured countless wrongs and injuries
until they are driven to rebellion. They know that the laws
are for the strong, that they protect the class that owns every-
thing. They know that in a contest with the workers, em-
ployers do not respect the laws, but quite shamelessly break
them.
Witness the lynching of Frank Little in Butte ;^- the flog-
ging of 17 men in Tulsa;^^ the forcible deportation of 1200
miners from Bisbee; the burning to death of women and little
children in the tents of Ludlow, Colorado, and the massacre
of workers in Trinidad."*^ So the IWWs respect the law only
as a soldier respects an enemy! Can you find it in your hearts
to blame them? I love them for their needs, their miseries,
their endurance and their daring spirit. It is because of this
spirit that the master class fears and hates them. It is because
What is the IWW? 93
of this spirit that the poor and oppressed love them with a
great love.
The oft-repeated charge that the Industrial Workers of the
World is organized to hinder industry is false.*^ It is orga-
nized in order to keep industries going. By organizing indus-
trially they are forming the structure of the new society in
the shell of the old.
Industry rests on the iron law of economic determination.
All history reveals that economic interests are the strongest
ties that bind men together. That is not because men's hearts
are evil and selfish. It is only a result of the inexorable law
of life. The desire to live is the basic principle that compels
men and women to seek a more suitable environment, so
that they may live better and more happily.
Now, don't you see, it is impossible to maintain an eco-
nomic order that keeps wages practically at a standstill, while
the cost of living mounts higher and even higher? Remem-
ber, the day will come when the tremendous activities of the
war will subside. Capitalism will inevitably find itself face
to face with a starving multitude of unemployed workers
demanding food or destruction of the social order that has
starved them and robbed them of their jobs.
In such a crisis the capitalist class cannot save itself or its
institutions. Its police and armies will be powerless to put
down the last revolt. For man at last will take his own, not
considering the cost. When that day dawns, if the workers
are not thoroughly organized, they may easily become a blind
force of destruction, unable to check their own momentum,
their cry for justice drowned in a howl of rage. Whatever is
good and beneficent in our civilization can be saved only by
the workers. And the Industrial Workers of the World is
formed with the object of carrying on the business of the world
when capitalism is overthrown. Whether the IW^W increases
in power or is crushed out of existence, the spirit that ani-
mates it is the spirit that must animate the labor movement
if it is to have a revolutionary function.
NEW YORK Call, FEBRUARY 3, 1918
In Behalf of the IWW
Down through the long weary years the will of the ruling
class has been to suppress either the man or his message when
they antagonized its interests. From the execution of the
propagandist and the burning of books, down through the
various degrees of censorship and expurgation to the highly
civilized legal indictment and winking at mob crime by
constituted authorities, the cry has ever been "crucify himl"
The ideas and activities of minorities are misunderstood and
misrepresented. It is easier to condemn than to investigate.
It takes courage to steer one's course through a storm of abuse
and ignominy. But I believe that discussion of even the most
bitterly controverted matters is demanded by our love of
justice, by our sense of fairness and an honest desire to under-
stand the problems that are rending society. Let us review
the facts relating to the situation of the IWWs since the
United States entered the war with the declared purpose to
conserve the liberties of the free peoples of the world.
During the last few months, in Washington State, at Pasco
and throughout the Yakima Valley, many IWW members
have been arrested without warrants, thrown into "buUpens"
without access to attorney, denied bail and trial by jury, and
some of them shot. Did any of the leading newspapers de-
nounce these acts as unlawful, cruel, undemocratic? No. On
the contrary, most of them indirectly praised the perpetrators
of these crimes for their patriotic service I
On August 1, 1917, in Butte, Montana, a cripple, Frank
Little, a member of the executive board of the IWW was
forced out of bed at three o'clock in the morning by masked
citizens, dragged behind an automobile and hanged on
a railroad trestle. Were the offenders punished? No. A
high government official has publicly condoned this murder,
thereby upholding lynch law and mob rule.
On the 12th of last July twelve hundred miners were de-
ported from Bisbee, Arizona, without legal process. Among
94
In Behalf of the IWW 95
them were many who were not IWWs or even in sympathy
with them. They were all packed into freight cars like cattle
and flung upon the desert of New Mexico, where they would
have died of thirst and hunger if an outraged society had not
protested. President Wilson telegraphed the Governor of
Arizona that it was a bad thing to do, and a commission was
sent to investigate. But nothing has been done. No measures
have been taken to return the miners to their homes and
families.
Last September 5, an army of officials raided every hall and
office of the IWW from Maine to California. They rounded
up 166 IWW officers, members and sympathizers, and now
they are in jail in Chicago, awaiting trial on the general
charge of conspiracy.^^
In a short time these men will be tried in a Chicago court.
The newspapers will be full of stupid, if not malicious com-
ments on their trial. Let us keep an open mind. Let us try
to preserve the integrity of our judgment against the mis-
representation, ignorance and cowardice of the day. Let us
refuse to yield to conventional lies and censure. Let us keep
our hearts tender towards those who are struggling mightily
against the greatest evils of the age. Who is truly indicted,
they or the social system that has produced them? A society
that permits the conditions out of which the IWWs have
sprung, stands self-condemned.
The IWW is pitted against the whole profit-making system.
It insists that there can be no compromise so long as the
majority of the working class lives in want, while the master
class lives in luxury. According to its statement, "there can
be no peace until the workers organize as a class, take
possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of
production and distribution, and abolish the wage-system."
In other words, the workers in their collectivity must own
and operate all the essential industrial institutions and secure
to each laborer the full value of his produce, I think it is for
this declaration of democratic purpose, and not for any wish
to betray their country, that the IWW members are being
persecuted, beaten, imprisoned and murdered.
96 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Surely the demands of the IWW are just. It is right that
the creators of wealth should own what they create. When
shall we learn that we are related one to the other, that we
are members of one body, that injury to one is injury to all?
Until the spirit of love for our fellow-workers, regardless of
race, color, creed or sex, shall fill the the world, until the
great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of respon-
sibility for each other's welfare, social justice cannot be at-
tained, and there can never be lasting peace upon earth.
I know those men are hungry for more life, more oppor-
tunity. They are tired of the hollow mockery of mere exist-
ence in a world of plenty. I am glad of every effort that the
workingmen make to organize. I realize that all things will
never be better until they are organized, until they stand all
together like one man. That is my hope of world democracy.
Despite their errors, their blunders and the ignominy heaped
upon them, I sympathize with the IWWs. Their cause is my
cause. While they are threatened and imprisoned, I am
manacled. If they are denied a living wage, I too am de-
frauded. While they are industrial slaves, I cannot be free.
My hunger is not satisfied while they are unfed. I cannot
enjoy the good things of life that come to me while they are
hindered and neglected.
The mighty mass movement of which they are a part is
discernible all over the world. Under the fire of the great
guns, the workers of all lands, becoming conscious of their
class, are preparing to take possession of their own.
That long struggle in which they have successively won
freedom of body from slavery and serfdom, freedom of mind
from ecclesiastical desf>otism, and more recently a voice in
government, has arrived at a new stage. The workers are still
far from being in possession of themselves or their labor.
They do not own and control the tools and materials which
they must use in order to live, nor do they receive anything
like the full value of what they produce. Workingmen every-
where are becoming aware that they are being exploited for
the benefit of others, and that they cannot be truly free unless
they own themselves and their labor. The achievement of
In Behalf of the IWW 97
such economic freedom stands in prospect — and at no distant
date — as the revolutionary climax of the age.
— The Liberator, march 1918; reprinted in Labor Scrap
Book: Out of the Shell Hole of War, pp. 38-42, charles h.
KERR and CO. CHICAGO, N.D.
To Eugene V. Debs
Of course, the Supreme Court has sustained the decision of
the lower court in your case.^"^ To my mind, the decision has
added another laurel to your wreath of victories. Once more
you are going to prison for upholding the liberties of the
people.
I write because my heart cries out, and will not be still. I
write because I want you to know that I should be proud if
the Supreme Court convicted me of abhorring war, and do-
ing all in my power to oppose it. When I think of the mil-
lions who have suffered in all the wicked wars of the past, I
am shaken with the anguish of a great impatience. I want to
fling myself against all brute powers that destroy life and
break the spirit of man.
In the persecution of our comrades there is one satisfac-
tion. Every trial of men like you, every sentence against
them, tears away the veil that hides the face of the enemy.
The discussion and agitation that follows the trials define
more sharply the positions that must be taken before all men
can live together in peace, happiness and security.
We were driven into the war for liberty, democracy and
humanity. Behold what is happening all over the world
today! Oh, where is the swift vengeance of Jehovah, that it
does not fall upon the hosts of those who are marshalling
machine guns against hunger-stricken people? It is the com-
placency of madness to call such acts "preserving law and
order." Law and order! What oceans of blood and tears are
shed in their name! I have come to loathe traditions and
institutions that take away the rights of the p>oor and protect
the wicked against judgment.
The wise fools who sit in the high places of justice fail to
see that, in revolutionary times like the present, vital issues
are settled, not by statutes, decrees and authorities, but in
spite of them. Like the Girondins in France, they imagine
that force can check the onrush of revolution. Thus they
98
To Eugene V. Debs 99
sow the wind, and unto them shall be the harvest of the
whirlwind.
You dear comrade! I have long loved you because you are
an apostle of brotherhood and freedom. For years I have
thought of you as a dauntless explorer going towards the
dawn and, like a humble adventurer, I have followed in the
trail of your footsteps. From time to time the greetings that
have come back to me from you have made me very happy,
and now I reach out my hand and clasp yours through prison
bars.
With heartfelt greetings, and with a firm faith that the
cause for which you are now martyred shall be all the
stronger because of your sacrifice and devotion, I am.
Yours for the revolution — may it come swiftly, like a shaft
sundering the dark!
— NEW YORK Call, APRIL 24, 1919; Appeal to Reason, may
17, 1919
End the Blockade of Soviet Russia!
I am glad to join the People's Freedom Union and other
friends of liberty in condemnation of the blockade of Russia
by Japan, Great Britain, France and the United States of
America.*^ This outrage upon a people who are trying to
work out their form of government, their ideas of life, upon
their own territory, is one of the blackest crimes in history.
The allied and associated governments which are guilty of
this infamy violate every principle of civilization, every rule
of common honesty.
For our governments are not honest. They do not openly
declare war against Russia and proclaim the reasons. They
are fighting the Russian people half-secretly and in the dark
with the lie of democracy on their lips and the indirect
weapon of the blockade in their hands.
We cannot remain silent while the government for which
we are partly responsible assists in starving women, children
and old people because, forsooth, our political rulers and
perhaps a majority of the American public do not approve
the ideas which underlie Russia's experiment in a new type
of society. No thinking American can be silent, can fail to be
on one side or the other. There can be no middle ground.
Those who are not for fair play to Russia, for the removal of
all alien soldiers from Russian soil,^^ for the lifting of the
blockade, are Russia's enemies. And Russia's enemies are
the friends and upholders of Czarism, of oppression, of ex-
ploitation, of the plunder of one people by another. Silence
in this case is not neutrality in a mere problem of politics
and trade. Every word of sympathy for the men, women and
children of Russia, whom the allied governments are trying
to starve into submission to the interests behind those govern-
ments, is a word on the side of humanity and progress.
What quarrel have our people with the Russian people?
We may disagree with their ideals and we have a right to
disagree. If their ideals are not ours, we need have no fear
100
End the Blockade of Soviet Russia! 101
of them, for they cannot supplant our own ideals, whatever
our own may be.
Has the truth been told about Russia? The whole truth
cannot be known because it is too vast and complicated and
involves rapidly developing events. But have not our people
been deliberately supplied with falsifications appealing to
their fears and their prejudices to make them hostile to
Russia and its present government?
Hold any opinion you may happen to hold about Russia
and its government. It is wrong to attack Russia without an
open declaration of war and an avowal of the true causes.
That is simply honest politics in accordance with the Consti-
tution of the United States,
Above the Constitution and the laws of politicians are the
laws of humanity, justice and right, embodied in the Declara-
tion of Independence and so often eloquently invoked by
President Wilson when he was urging us into a war against
Germany with Russia as one of our Allies. And now Germany
is being urged to join our Allies and associates in a war
against Russia. Can all this shifting of alliances, this change
of partners in a few months any longer deceive us? We fought
and helped win a war to make the world safe for democracy,
for ideals. That war is finished and our ideals are, of course,
established. What ideal is served by this war, this actual war
against Russia, denied by the State Department and carried
on by the War Department? And of the generous vocabulary
of liberty and justice and humanity which has been strained
and worn during the past few years, what is left to apply to
this war to make it seem right to the heart and conscience of
Americans?
It is not enough to express our feelings about the treat-
ment which our government is according Russia. It is not
enough to defend one part of democracy. All democracy must
stand together. All humanity must be humanitarian or all
will perish. We cannot divorce an unrighteous intervention
in Russia, nor the attack of France and Rumania on Hun-
gary, from the theft of Shantung. For they are only specific
evils in a world-wide evil, and we must cure them to maintain
102 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
ourselves and all mankind in health and happiness. We must
oppose hypocrisy, greed, murder, wherever we find them in
order to save ourselves and the rest of humanity. If the Presi-
dent and his administration will not apply to Russia and to
every other country, including the United States of America,
the principles which he has expressed over and over again,
we must bring pressure to bear upon our government. We
must appeal to the citizens of America to regard with suspi-
cion the news from and about Russia which is printed for
them every day, and to demand the enforcement of the Presi-
dent's own proposition that every nation has a right to govern
itself, to self-determination.
NEW YORK Call, NOVEMBER 10, 1919
To President Woodrow Wilson:
The Blockade of Russia
The American Women's Emergency Committee, organized
more than a year ago to promote the lifting of the blockade
on Russia so that the suffering and starvation of innocent
men and children might be ended/" again sends to you its
vigorous protest against the continuation of a policy that
makes the return of Russia to normal conditions impossible.
More especially we protest against the recent action of your
administration in ordering the deportation of the only repre-
sentative of the Russian Soviet government with whom the
United States government can begin negotiations that will
bring about peace for Russia and the rest of Europe.^^ As
American women we feel that this arbitrary act is taken with-
out consideration of the American spirit that still lives — the
spirit that guaranteed the right of self-determination to all
peoples and that has lent relief to the suffering of all countries
in the past.
We would remind you that in 1781, when Francis Dana
was sent to Russia as the representative of our own young
republic, he was received by Czarist Russia.^^ Js this country
to be less tolerant more than 200 years later?
We await some further consideration and action from your
adminstration on this recent decision, which can only be
resented by every American, and again beg to ask you what
your administration will do to end this unjust war against
a people with whom the United States government has never
been at war.
(with Harriet Stanton Blatch)
NEW YORK Call, DECEMBER 21, 1920
103
A Plea for Recognition of Soviet Russia
Statement at a Hearing on Russian Free Trade before
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee^^
I am amazed that any thinking, liberty-loving man or
woman should remain silent in the face of such an inhuman
policy toward a starving and bleeding people. I hope, I trust,
I pray that my country will not remain silent.
America was the friend of Russia during the long years in
which the Russian people were denied opportunity for politi-
cal expression. I do not believe that impulse of sympathy has
died in American hearts. We still wish to be friends and
brethren to the people of Russia. If we had a more enlight-
ened press in this country — a press breathing the spirit of the
founders of this nation, the spirit of 1776, there would be no
blockade of Russia. There would be no doubt of America's
purpose to help the forces of progress to prevail there. Our
attitude would be one of encouragement and not of hostility
to the daring experiment which is being tried out in Russia.
American history and traditions would tend to deepen our
interest in an experiment to abolish autocrats and privilege,
to prove whether the workers can rule themselves, and main-
tain their position against internal dissensions and external
aggressions.
The principle of the right of every nation to choose its own
form of government is the very breath of democracy. In
obedience to this principle America severed its relations
with England and declared its political independence. Every
American should feel a partnership in the struggle for human
freedom that Russia is going through with such fortitude and
sacrifice. If we could see the facts without the misrepresenta-
tion with which the newspapers obstruct them, we should be
the champions of Russia, her steadfast friends in her hour of
need.
But championship and cooperation have been checked and
made difficult by sinister and corrupt intrigue and falsehood.
These are the true facts:
104
A Plea for Recognition of Soviet Russia 105
Russia had no quarrel with anyone outside her own bor-
ders. She sought no nation's territory. She coveted no neigh-
bor's goods. And yet all the strong nations have struck out at
her with hatred in their hearts. Her stern, noble resolve to
build a real democracy upon the ruins of the old autocracy
of Russia was her only crime, and for that she has been
maligned as if her people were the vilest on earth. Her terri-
tory has been invaded by marauders. Her women and chil-
dren have been starved and murdered. She has been harassed
and persecuted. She has been denied medicine and industrial
machinery. And America has stood by silently while these
atrocities were being perpetrated. But the most insidious
propaganda cannot blind the conscience of humanity forever.
I have a confident hope that our policy of hostile obstruction
will not long continue. Surely this country will not much
longer stand silent and see crimes committed in its name
that should never have been tolerated by any nation which
claimed to be civilized.
Let us individually and collectively express our condem-
nation of the cumulative wrongs done to the Russian people.
What we have to do is not merely to protest against the star-
vation blockade but also to assert a right — the right which
is ours by the sacrifices this nation made upon the battlefields
of Europe — the right of peoples to peace and security. We
gave our treasures and the lives of our young men in vain if
we fail now in this supreme moment, if we tolerate the
further hindrance and betrayal of Russia. We unseated the
Kaiser, but the imperialistic spirit of conquest and greed is
still in the saddle everywhere in Europe. We have a right to
demand the Entente guarantee Russia's freedom to develop
and govern itself in the manner that shall seem good to the
Russian people, without interference from any foreign power.
We owe it to our children, to our country, to the generations
which will come after us, that we shall not silently counte-
nance open, flagrant, contemptuous violation of the rights for
which we entered the world war. The Russian question is
the acid test of our national integrity. It is also an oppor-
tunity for us to promote world peace and unity. Here is a fair
106 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
cause, a just cause, a cause of reconstruction. Statesmen and
premiers never labored for higher ends.
It should be remembered also that the recognition of
Russia is perhaps of greater importance to America than to
Russia itself. To be on the side of friendly relations with
Russia is to march with the events and laws of world develop-
ment. Cooperation with Russia will be the triumph of brains
and spirit over stupidity and passion, and in this triumph all
reasonable beings have a vital interest.
The thought that we, the members of the American
Women's Emergency Committee, who will appear before the
Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate,
are a part of the great, justice-loving American people,
should give us courage and steadfastness. When we protest
with the power of a hundred million Americans, who shall
resist the push and sweep and might of that flood of public
opinion? Together, we can speak so clear and so high and so
insistent that the world must hear us. And hearing us, all
right-minded, compassionate men and women will join us,
and once more, with God's help, America will take up the
championship of the disinherited and oppressed. We have
had dreams of a world better, freer, happier, nobler because
America was a democracy. Let us go to work in earnest with
our hands, our voices, our lives to make that better world a
reality.
— new YORK Call, FEBRUARY 27, 1921
Onward, Comrades!
An Address at the Rand School New Year's Eve Ball,^*
December 31,1920
The hour has struck for the Grand March! Onward, com-
rades, all together! Fall in line! Start the New Year with a
cheer! Let us join the world's procession marching toward
a glad tomorrow. Strong of hope and brave in heart the West
shall meet the East! March with us, brothers every one!
March with us to all things new! Climb with us the hills of
God to a wider, holier life. Onward, comrades, all together,
onward to meet the dawn!
Leave behind you doubts and fears! What need have we for
"ifs" and "buts?" Away with parties, schools and leagues! Get
together, keep in step, shoulder to shoulder, hearts throbbing
as one! Face the future, outdaring all you have dared! March
on, O comrades, strong and free, out of darkness, out of
silence, out of hate and custom's deadening sway! Onward,
comrades, all together, onward to the wind-blown dawn!
With us shall go the new day, shining behind the dark. With
us shall go power, knowledge, justice, truth. The time is full!
A new world awaits us. Its fruits, its joys, its opportunities
are ours for the taking! Fear not the hardships of the road —
the storm, the parching heat or winter's cold, hunger or thirst
or ambushed foe! There are bright lights ahead of us, leave
the shadows behind! In the East a new star is risen! With
pain and anguish the old order has given birth to the new,
and behold in the East a man-child is born! Onward, com-
rades, all together! Onward to the campfires of Russia! On-
ward to the coming dawn!
Through the night of our despair rings the keen call of the
new day. All the powers of darkness could not still the shout
of joy in faraway Moscow! Meteor-like through the heavens
flashed the golden words of light, "Soviet Republic of
Russia." Words sun-like piercing the dark, joyous radiant
love-words banishing hate, bidding the teeming world of
107
108 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
men to wake and live! Onward, comrades, all together, on-
ward to the bright, redeeming dawn!
With peace and brotherhood make sweet the bitter way of
men! Today and all the days to come, repeat the words of
Him who said, "Thou shalt not kill." Send on psalming
winds the angel chorus, "Peace on earth, good-will to men."
Onward march, and keep on marching until His will on earth
is done! Onward, comrades, all together, onward to the life-
giving fountain of dawn!
All along the road beside us throng the peoples sad and
broken, weeping women, children hungry, homeless like
little birds cast out of their nest. Onward march, comrades,
strong to lift and save! Our brothers watch us from barred
windows! With their hearts aflame, untamed, glorying in
martyrdom they hail us passing quickly, "Halt not, O com-
rades, yonder glimmers the star of our hope, the red-centered
dawn in the East! Halt not, lest you perish ere you reach the
land of promise." Onward, comrades, all together, onward
to the sun-red dawn!
We march through trackless wilds of hate and death, across
earth's battlefields. O comrades, pause one panting moment
and shed a tear for the youth of the world, killed in its
strength and beauty — our brothers, our comrades tenderly
loved, the valiant young men of all lands eagerly seeking life's
great enterprises, love, adventure and the fair country of
bright dreams. Under our feet they lie, mingling their clean
young flesh with the soil, the rain and the heat! Over our
murdered dead we march to the new day. Onward, comrades,
all together, onward to the spirit's unquenchable dawn!
new YORK Call, JANUARY 30, 1921
Help Soviet Russia
I love Russia and all who stand loyally by her in her
mighty wrestlings with the giant powers of ignorance and
imperialist greed. When I first heard of the glorious words,
"Soviet Republic of Russia," it was as if a new light shone
through my darkness, I felt that the sun of a better day had
risen upon the world. Those glowing, hope-inspiring words,
"Soviet Republic of Russia," meant that at last the principles
of truth, justice and brotherhood had gained a foothold upon
earth, and this thought has run like a shining furrow
through the dark years that have intervened. We have wit-
nessed Russia's superhuman struggle in a world blinded by
avarice and calumny. But despite intrigues and blockades and
the wicked misinterpretations of a stupid, dishonest press, she
stands today firmly entrenched in her just cause, while the
old social order is collapsing at her feet.
Oh, why cannot the workers see that the cause of Russia is
their cause? Her struggle for economic freedom is their
struggle, her perishing children are their children, and her
dreams, her aspirations, her martyrdom and victories are an
internal part of the workers' campaign for a better, saner
world. Why can they not understand that their own best
instincts are in revolt against a social order which enthralls
masses of men and leads inevitably to poverty, suffering and
war? How spiritually blind are men, that they fail to see that
we are all bound together! We rise or fall together, we are
dwarfed or godlike, free or chained together.
If the workers would only use their minds a little, instead
of letting others do their thinking for them, they would see
quickly through the flimsy arguments of the newspapers they
read. They are told that the famine in Russia is caused by
"Marxian socialism," and that four years of Bolshevism have
brought Russia to the doors of the world begging for bread.
If that is true, what has caused the famine in China? What is
the cause of undernourishment in some of our southern
109
110 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
states? And what is the cause of unemployment throughout
this great, rich land? Begging for bread is not uncommon
within the capitalistic nations, and these days we hear a great
deal of soup kitchens and the bread line.^^ These phenomena
occur even in times which the newspapers are accustomed to
speak of as "prosperous."
The famine in Russia is the result of a drought following
years of war and a long imperialistic blockade of Russian
ports, preventing entrance to them of all necessary supplies.
This is the plain truth. Yet millions of sensible men and
women have been deceived about conditions in Russia. But
I trust that the good sense of the American people will soon
surmount the wall of calumnies and prejudices which now
prevents friendly relations between the two countries.
Through the mist of tears and sweat and blood of strug-
gling men I salute her and wish for her the love of an awakened
and grateful humanity.
Here is a thought that keeps singing in my mind but will
not fold its wings in the formal limits of a letter:
Great, O Russia, is thy task! Thine is the race immortal
whose beams shall spread across the earth, wide as the wings
of heaven, bright as the morning light. Lift high thy flaming
torch wherever men are slaves! Breathe upon them the life-
quickening fires of thy creative mind. Give them the potent
red light of thy courage, that they may look upon the faces
of comrades in every land, and be to all their kind dear
friends and neighbors. Then shall all men discover thee, a
paradise upon the verge of doom.
— The Toiler, November 19, 1921
The Rand School
To Bertha H. Mailly, Executive Secretary :^^
On my return from Pittsburgh I found your telegram
awaiting me. It will not be possible for me to be with you on
the 30th. But I am proud to say my word for the Rand
School, because I believe it is dong valuable and necessary
work. I think of the Rand School as a center of light from
which thought-sparks fly in every direction, penetrating here
and there the darkness which covers this precious country of
ours like a dense fog.
If the Rand School succeeds in making it clear even to a
few individuals that the collapse of our present-day civiliza-
tion is due to economic and social causes and not to any one
nation or race, it will have accomplished something worth-
while. Further, if it teaches men that the world is an eco-
nomic unit and that no part of the world can do business
without reference to its relations with all the other parts, it
will have taken a long step in the direction of finding a
remedy for what is wrong with us. There is less need for
resentment and denunciation of the evils we perceive in our
social system than of patient study and determination to un-
derstand them. Education is the most potent and effective
weapon that can be put into the hands of the proletariat. I
sometimes think ignorance is the measure of a man's wrong-
doing. Perhaps he needs only to see, to understand, in order
that he may burgeon out of the darkness into light. Any ac-
tivity that stimulates thought and discussion gives impetus
to progress.
It must be obvious to anyone who thinks at all that the
world is passing through a period of economic, social and
political change. Circumstances are forcing men to alter their
attitude toward time-honored institutions and traditions.
The purpose of the Rand School is to give a right direction
to men's thoughts and assist them through the chaos of transi-
tion. This is a noble purpose and cannot fail to accumulate
strength as it goes along.
Ill
112 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Therefore I say to every one who wishes to see a saner civi-
lization rise out of the wreck of the old order, get behind the
Rand School, for it is leading the way to the achievement of
a splendid enterprise.
NEW YORK Call, DECEMBER 30, 1922
To Senator Robert M. La Follette
Unto you greetings and salutations and fealty! My con-
gratulations are somewhat delayed; but if you know how my
heart rejoiced when I heard of your nomination, my silence
would not seem to you like indifference.^^
I have hesitated to write to you because I know that the
newspapers opposed to the Progressive movement will cry out
at the "pathetic exploitation of deaf and blind Helen Keller
by the 'motley elements' who support La Follette." It would
be difficult to imagine anything more fatuous and stupid than
the attitude of the press toward anything I say on public af-
fairs. So long as I confine my activities to social service and
the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me
archpriestess of the sightless," "wonder woman" and "a mod-
ern miracle." But when it comes to a discussion of poverty,
and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics — that
the industrial system under which we live is at the root of
much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world —
that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the
handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of
the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should
have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of
life, is an Utopian dream, and one who seriously contem-
plates its realization must indeed be deaf, dumb and blind.
As political speeches and editorials of our "best" papers are
transmitted to me, I am amazed at the power which stops the
ears and clouds the vision of society.
Please pardon this long personal preamble. It is rather out
of place in a congratulatory letter, but it explains my silence
on subjects which are of vital interest to me. Opposition does
not discomfort me when it is open and honest. I do not mind
having my ideas attacked and my aims opposed and ridiculed,
but it is not fair fighting or good argument to find that
"Helen Keller's mistakes spring out of the limitations of her
development."
113
114 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
For years I have followed your public efforts with approval
and admiration. I have often wished to write and express my
interest in what you were doing, but have refrained for the
reasons given above. Recently Mr. Leffingwell, a son of Wis-
consin and an enthusiastic friend of yours, happened to be
calling here. When it was revealed that I was a La Follette
woman, Mr. Leffingwell urged me to write you. I am embold-
ened to follow his suggestion because of God's commandment
to "bring forth the blind people that have eyes and the deaf
that have ears."
I rejoiced that a sufficient number of thinking Americans
have come to the conclusion, after many trials and tribula-
tions, that you are the man of the hour — the man most capa-
ble of breaking the power of private monopoly and leading
the people to victory. Your nomination at Cleveland was in
the nature of a gesture toward the readoption of the Declara-
tion of Independence. The revolt of thoughtful Democrats
and Republicans against innumerable blunders and obvious
incompetence of their own parties is the sure sign of a new
spirit in the nation. I believe we have heard the swan song
of the old parties. The muddling of their leaders has brought
the world to the brink of chaos. The Progressives insist upon
taking matters into their own hands. They see that the gov-
ernment must be revitalized.
I am for you because you have courage and vision and un-
yielding determination to find a sensible, just way out of the
evils which threaten this country. I am for you because you
have a forward-looking mind. You are alive, and have a grip
on live issues. When I think of you, I do not need to go back
to dead statesmen for inspiration, or dig out of books ideals
for which I am willing to make sacrifices. You have principles
you are ready to fight for, to risk your life for. Your golden
age is not behind you, but just ahead of you, and to be
reached in the future.
I am for you because you stand for liberty and progressive
government. You know that a constitution, however admira-
ble, cannot be final as an effectual guide to conduct in the
To Senator Robert M. La Follette 115
ever shifting circumstances of a rapidly developing nation
which is ever touching elbows with the rest of the world.
I am for you because you believe that the people should
rule, and that the voters should have assured and effective
freedom of choice of those who make and execute the laws. I
am for you because you believe that labor should participate
in public affairs. The aim of all government should be to
secure for the workers as large a share as possible of the fruits
of their toil. For is it not labor that creates all things?
I am for you because you have held fast to the three ele-
ments of human liberty — free speech, a free press and free-
dom of assemblage. You understand that to sweep away the
rights of the people by legislation and force is not progress,
is not justice, but is decadence.
I am for you because you have discernment, and perceive
that the ills from which America is now suffering are eco-
nomic rather than political. You realize that the curtailment
and limitation of wealth and special privilege are essential to
the building up of honest government.
I am for you because you represent the spirit of kindly con-
sideration by every American toward all his fellowmen. You
believe in peaceable methods of settling differences — in open
discussion and the method of friendship as opposed to in-
tolerance, hatred and violence. You stand for an enlis^htened
world policy, for international cooperation and amity.
— AUGUST 1924
The Only Kind of War I Believe In
We are living in an age of constructive philanthropy. The
old idea was to alleviate pain, and to help the victims of dis-
aster to live as contentedly as might be. Misfortune was
looked upon as God's yoke to be borne with fortitude. Very
slowly this idea has been discarded as a superstition, as a
hindrance to right thinking and better living.
The modern idea is to prevent, to root out the evils that
destroy the eyes, the ears, the lives and the happiness of men.
We are now entering upon a truceless war to exterminate the
causes which lie at the root of disease. That is the only kind
of war I believe in. It is the true battle of God against the
infidel. We know that hospitals and institutions for defec-
tives are not permanent temples of salvation. They are only
temporary campsites along the way upon which the race is
journeying towards a happier life — not in a dreamed-of para-
dise, but here on earth.
Already whole communities refuse to condemn thousands
of children to labor which dwarfs their body and minds, and
the thought is becoming intolerable that any human being
should be wantonly plunged into the abyss of blindness. It is
time for us all to wake from our lotus sleep, and accept the
responsibilities of men and women out of which grow their
achievements.
It is easy to follow the old roads, to keep alive the tradition
that all is well with the world because God is in His heaven.
It is hard to think, to investigate, to substitute action for pity
and right conditions for charity, but that is the price we must
pay, so that all may indeed be well with the world. That state
cannot prosper whose citizens are kept in ignorance of the
knowledge that saves, and in mental and spiritual poverty,
I read about a baby who is so nearly blind that he will have
to be educated in a school for the sightless. This baby was
born two and a half years ago at one of the hospitals in a large
city of this state. It seems to me that this can mean just one
116
The Only Kind of War I Beueve In 117
thing — gross carelessness on the part of somebody. We live in
an age of publicity. Should not the public have been ac-
quainted with the facts in this case and the responsibility
placed where it belongs? I realize that it is a matter for
thankfulness. Not so very long ago the blindness of that baby
would have been regarded as an inevitable misfortune. The
little victim would have been pitied, and in the course of
time sent to an institution. But now we know that the cruel,
fruitless beating of clipped wings against dark windows of
that human spirit need never have been if prompt, effective
treatment had been given the infant's eyes.
All our individual and collective responsibilities and duties
to our fellow beings should be constantly impressed upon all
minds. More and more we should come to understand that
we are our brothers' keepers, and that a state is great in pro-
portion to the opportunities which it affords its citizens to
become healthy, useful, happy human beings.
A new will has come into the world, not a will to power,
but a will to service. Everywhere I feel there is a growing
desire to restore, to rehabilitate, to reclaim and promote
better living for all men. It seems to me we Americans are
foreordained to lead in humanitarian enterprises. We are
prosperous, we are bubbling over with youthful energy and
optimism. We can, if we are so minded, roll back the clouds
of calamity which overshadow the world. We can keep the
torch of service bright in every land.
What nobler tribute could be paid to the memory of the
young men of America who died for world freedom? Friend-
ship and cooperation between nations are the most effective
barriers to war. Knowledge and sympathy travel like light and
make all the common roads of the earth safe for everybody
to walk in unafraid. An international association for the
prevention of disease and the conservation of health would be
a long step towards creating the thing we hope for out of the
travesty we call civilization.
— The New Leader, july 25, 1925
The Spirit of Lenin
I think that every honest belief should be treated with fair-
ness, yet I cry out against people who uphold the empire of
gold. I am aware of moods when the perfect state of peace,
brotherhood and universal love seems so far off that I turn
to division, pugnacity and the pageant of war. I am just like
St. Paul when he says, "I delight in the Law of God after the
inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind." I am perfectly sure that love
will bring everything right in the end, but I cannot help
sympathizing with the oppressed who feel driven to use
force to gain the rights that belong to them.
That is one reason why I have turned with such interest
toward the great experiment now being tried in Russia. No
revolution was ever a sudden outbreak of lawlessness and
wreckage incited by an unholy brood of cranks, anarchists
and pedagogues. People turn to a revolution only when every
other dream has faded into the dimness of sorrow. When we
look upon these mighty disturbances which seem to leap so
suddenly out of the troubled depths we find that they were
fed by little streams of discontent and oppression. These little
streams which have their source deep down in the miseries of
the common people all flow together at last in a retributive
flood.
The Russian Revolution did not originate with Lenin.
It had hovered for centuries in the dreams of Russian mystics
and patriots, but when the body of Lenin was laid in simple
state in the Kremlin, ^^ all Russia trembled and wept. The
mouths of hungry enemies fed on new hopes, but the spirit
of Lenin descended upon the weeping multitude as with
cloven tongues of fire, and they spoke one to another and
were not afraid. "Let us not follow him with cowering
hearts," they said, "let us rather gird ourselves for the task
he has left us. Where our dull eyes see only ruin, his clearer
sight discovers the road by which we shall gain our liberty.
118
The Spirit of Lenin 119
Revolution he sees, yea, and even disintegration which sym-
bolizes disorder is in truth the working of God's undeviating
order; and the manner of our government shall be no less
wonderful than the manner of our deliverance. If we are
steadfast, the world will be quickened to courage by our
deeds."
Men vanish from earth leaving behind them the furrows
they have ploughed. I see the furrow Lenin left sown with
the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast
deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty
crops for the ages to reap.
— ^HELEN KELLER, Midstream: My Later Life, new york,
DOUBLEDAY AND CO., 1929, PP. 334-35
Notes
1. On November 7, 1911, the city of Schenectady in New York state elected
a Socialist administration headed by Mayor George R. Lunn, Pastor of the
First Reformed Church. Among Mayor Lunn's appointments was Walter
Lippmann, then a young Socialist from New York. City, who was named the
Mayor's personal secretary.
2. The Erfurt Program was the German Workers' Party program adopted
at the Erfurt Party Congress of 1891 and which served as a model for nearly
all the programs of the parties in the Second International.
3. The National Socialist was published in Washington, D.C., by William
J. Ghent. It was a right-wing Socialist journal, bitterly opposed to the ad-
vocates of "direct action" as espoused by the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW).
4. The International Socialist Review was a militantly left-wing Socialist
monthly published in Chicago by Charles H. Kerr. It endorsed many of the
policies and practices of the IWW.
5. The New York Call was for many years the leading Socialist daily paper
in the United States. It was published from 1908 to the end of 1923.
6. The Appeal to Reason, a weekly Socialist journal published by Julius
A. Wayland and edited by Fred Warren, began publication in 1895 in Kansas
City, and a few months later established its permanent home in Girard,
Kansas. Within a decade its circulation grew to 260,000, and by 1910 it had
472,255 paid subscribers. It appealed especially to the farmers of the middle
west.
7. In January 1907, the United States government charged Fred Warren
with sending "scurrilous, defamatory and threatening" literature through
the mails. The action was based on the publication of two articles in the
Appeal to Reason of January 5, 1907. The first, written by Eugene V. Debs,
criticized judicial procedure in the celebrated case of Moyer, Haywood and
Pettibone, leaders of the Western Federation of Miners who were accused of
the bomb killing of ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho in December
1905. The second article, written by Warren, dealt with a former governor,
Taylor, of Kentucky, who was wanted in his native state in connection with
the murder of a political rival. When the governor of Kentucky refused to
extradite Taylor from Indiana, Warren offered a reward of $1,000 to anybody
who seized Taylor and turned him over to the Kentucky authorities.
After much delay, Warren was convicted in 1909, sentenced to six months
in prison, and fined $5,000. On February 2, 1911, yielding to a mass defense
campaign in Warren's behalf of which Helen Keller's letter was part. Presi-
dent William Howard Taft reduced the fine to $100, and issued a pardon
which kept Warren out of jail.
8. The reference is to the Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone case. For a discussion
of the case which resulted in the acquittal of Haywood and the dismissal of
the charges against the other two defendants, see Philip S. Foner, The In-
120
Notes 121
dustrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917, History of the Labor Movement
in the United States, vol. IV, New York, 1965, pp. 40-59.
9. The Supreme Court ruled that the seizure of the three union officials
had been illegal, but now that they were in Idaho's jurisdiction, there was
no legal remedy. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Joseph McKenna said:
"Kidnapping is a crime, pure and simple. All the officers of the law are
supposed to be on guard against it. But how is it when the law becomes the
kidnapper, when the oflScers of the law, using its forms and exerting its
power, become abductors? The foundation of extradition between the states
is that the accused should be a fugitive from justice from the demanding
state, and he may challenge the fact by habeas corpus immediately upon his
arrest." {Ibid., p. 51.)
10. The headline in the New York Call's report of Miss Keller's speech
read: "Helen Keller Points to Social Enemies. Cruelty of Commercialism
Responsible for Much Blindness and Misery." The Call noted that while
for several years specialists in the education of the blind "have attacked the
problem of saving eyesight as an isolated problem," Miss Keller, in her ad-
dress, "related the problem of blindness to the fundamental problems of
social well being. She did not hesitate to declare her realization of the fact
that much disease and suffering is directly due to the thirst of employers
for profits." (New York Call, February 15, 1911.)
11. Israel Zangwill, the British novelist, was an active supporter of the
woman suffrage movement in England, and fully endorsed its militant tac-
tics. In his address, "Votes for Women," he used the phrase "not votes for
Liberals, or votes for Labour, but votes for Women."
12. Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of Mrs. Emmaline Pankhurst, the
militant leader of the British woman suffrage movement, addressed woman
suffrage meetings in the United States early in 1911.
13. The full title of Edmond Kelly's book is Twentieth Century Socialism;
What it is not; What it is; How it may come. It was published in New York
in 1910.
14. The strike at Little Falls, New York, a major center for knit goods and
underwear, was led by the IWW. It began on October 10, 1912, in protest
against a reduction of wages of from 75 cents to $2.00 per week, following the
application of a state law reducing hours for women workers from 60 to 54
per week. Average weekly wages before the reduction were $8.00 to $9.00 for
men, $5.00 for women, and $3.75 for children. On January 2, 1913, after a
12-week strike marked by police brutality and widespread arrests of strikers,
1,500 mill workers, native Americans, Italians and Hungarians — 70 per cent
of them women — ended their walkout with a wage increase.
15. In his paper, the National Socialist, W. J. Ghent wrote: "Either Hay-
wood or the Socialist Party will have to go." Ghent called for the removal of
W. D. ("Big Bill") Haywood from the National Executive Committee of the
Socialist Party. He charged that Haywood had violated Article II, Section 6,
of the Party's constitution, adopted at the 1912 national convention, which
called for the expulsion of any member "who opposes political action or ad-
vocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the
working class to aid in its emancipation. . . ." In a referendum, with about
25 per cent of the membership participating, Haywood was recalled from the
National Executive Committee by a vote of 22,000 to 11,000.
The New York Call of February 22, 1913, carried "An Open Letter to
122 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Helen Keller" by Carol D. Thompson, a member of the Socialist's Party's
National Executive Committee, and an opponent of Haywood and his fol-
lowers. Thompson assured Miss Keller that controversies in the Socialist
Party were nothing new, and that while he regretted them, he rejoiced in
the fact "that matters of importance are being settled, decisions are being
reached, the future is being made more secure, and socialism is coming."
For a discussion of how the expulsion of Haywood and his followers weak-
ened the Socialist Party, see Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World,
1905-917, op. cit., pp. 391-414.
16. Woodrow Wilson, elected President of the United States on November
5, 1912, entered the White House as the champion of what he called the
"New Freedom." On April 8, 1913, he appeared before the two houses of
Congress to deliver his first message, and outlined a program for fundamental
reforms in tariffs and banking. In the fall of 1913, Congress enacted the
Underwood Tariff and the Federal Reserve Act. While the tariff law lowered
tariff schedules, it did not affect the trusts. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act,
passed in the fall of 1914, also had little effect on the trusts.
17. Miss Keller's letter was in reply to an editorial which appeared in the
New York Sun of June 4, 1913. The editorial entitled "Helen Keller and Her
Pupil," was based on an alleged dispatch from Madrid reporting that King
Alfonso had engaged Miss Keller "in the belief that she, as the most accom-
plished of deaf mutes, is best able to instruct others suffering from a similar
affliction." Prince Jaime, the King's five-year-old son, was unable to hear.
The editorial in the Sun went on to quote from the alleged dispatch that
Miss Keller was to have Prince Jaime under her care "for the next few
months" during which time she would teach him "in the way she taught
herself years ago." It then commented:
"It can hardly be said, however, that Miss Keller 'taught herself,' altogether,
nor is it conceivable that she could do much in the way of teaching in a few
months. Perhaps it is feared at the court that she may carry her teaching a
little too far and impart some of her latest discoveries to the young Prince.
For since she ceased to be a violent preacher of the Baconian doctrine, Helen
Keller has turned her attention to the terrible evils of the capitalistic system
under which she was brought up, and has learned to reiterate all the so-
cialistic jargon with that extraordinary quickness and fluency which she has
shown in everything she has acquired.
"It might be inconvenient in these days to turn a Prince into a dispenser
of socialistic commonplace."
18. Arturo Giovannitti, IWW leader, was one of the speakers at the So-
ciological Conference.
19. While in San Francisco during a cross-country lecture tour. Miss Keller
learned that several hundred unemployed workers had been attacked and
severely beaten in Sacramento by the police, members of the fire department,
county sheriffs and deputies recruited from among Sacramento citizens.
(The unemployed, among whom were members of the IWW, were en route
from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to demand relief from the govern-
ment.) Since Miss Keller was scheduled to lecture in Sacramento that evening,
a reporter for the Sacramento Star asked for her opinion of the treatment of
the unemployed. Informed that if she dared to talk on the subject in Sacra-
mento, she would be "hauled down and carried from the city in a cart,"
Miss Keller declared: "I hope I will be." (Sacramento Star, March 16, 1914.)
Notes 123
20. Briefly stated, syndicalism was the doctrine that the working class
should confine its activities to the economic field, relying on the strike and
other forms of direct action, rather than political action, to win immediate
gains and, through the One Big Union and the General Strike, the overthrow
of capitalism and the establishment of a new social system in which the
trade unions would conduct industry and all other social activities. The
IWW, of which Giovannitti was a leader, advocated many of the principles
of syndicalism.
21. During the great textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led by
the IWW, which began on January 12, 1912, and ended on March 18,
1912, in a victory for the strikers, Giovannitti was arrested along with
Joseph Ettor, IWW leader of the strike, on the charge of murder. The ob-
vious frameup to deprive the strikers of their leaders, aroused one of the
greatest defense movements in American labor history. The trial began on
September 30, 1912, in the Superior Court of Essex County, sitting at Salem,
and ended in the acquittal of Ettor and Giovannitti. (See Foner, The In-
dustrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917, op. cit., pp. 150, 335-37, 343-46.
348, 401, 408, 411. For Giovannitti 's poem, "To Helen Keller," see The
Collected Poems of Arturo Giovannitti, Chicago, 1962, p. 63.)
22. Joseph Hillstrora, better known as Joe Hill, was the famous IWW
song writer and organizer. In January 1914, he was arrested in Salt Lake
City, Utah, on the charge of holding up a grocery store and killing the
owner. He was found guilty in a trial which many Americans, especially
those in the labor movement, felt was a travesty of justice, and a mass move-
ment arose demanding a new trial. Joe Hill was scheduled to be executed
on September 30, 1915, but when President Wilson appealed to Governor
Spry of Utah to postpone the execution, the state authorities rescheduled it
for November 19. Miss Keller, along with many others, appealed to President
Wilson to intervene again. Although Wilson replied to Miss Keller that he
could do nothing even though he wished "most sincerely it was in my
power to do something," he did urge upon Governor Spry "the justice and
desirability of a thorough reconsideration of the case of Joseph Hillstrom."
The second appeal was rejected, and Joe Hill was executed on November
19, 1915. {See Philip S. Foner, The Case of Joe Hill, New York, 1965).
23. William Sanger, husband of Margaret Sanger, was arrested in the
summer of 1915 by agents of the New York Society for the Suppression of
Vice for giving out one copy of his wife's pamphlet, Family Limitation. He
was sentenced to $150 fine or 30 days in jail. The arrest and sentence aroused
widespread protests. [See Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography, New York,
1938, pp. 176-78.)
24. In 1915 Henry Ford, the millionaire automobile manufacturer, spon-
sored a "peace ship," the Oskar II. It carried pacifists to Europe to attempt
to initiate steps to end the European war. As Miss Keller predicted, the
peace expedition ended in failure.
25. On December 16, 1915, the New York Call announced that Helen
Keller would present "the Socialist interpretation of the causes of the Eu-
ropean war and the dangers confronting the United States" when she spoke at
the Labor Forum. It announced further that Miss Keller "will advocate the
general strike as the speediest way to end the European conflict." "All the
soldiers have to do now," it continued, "is to throw their rifles into the
trenches, bid their ofl&cers and rulers a 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy New
124 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
Year' and march to their families and jobs, according to Miss Keller. When
the soldiers find they can stop war so easily, they never will go back to
another, in her opinion."
Helen Keller was introduced by Mrs. Rose Pastor Stokes, a leader of the
Socialist Party and wife of millionaire Socialist, J. G. Phelps Stokes.
Following Miss Keller's speech, pro-preparedness groups demanded that
the New York City Board of Education revoke the Labor Forum's permit to
use the Washington Irving High School building for public meetings. (New
York Herald, December 22, 1915; New York Evening Sun, December 22,
1915.) The Board, however, refused to bow to this pressure, and on Decem-
ber 26, 1915, Andrew Furuseth, leader of the Seamen's Union of the Pacific,
spoke in the high school under the auspices of the Labor Forum.
26. Following her speech at the Labor Forum, Miss Keller left New York
City on a lecture trip through the West which was to last until June first.
But when the Women's Peace Party and the Labor Forum asked her to speak
again on the question of "preparedness" at Carnegie Hall to accommodate
the thousands who had not heard her at Washington Irving High School,
Miss Keller changed her lecturing schedule and returned to New York. She
requested only that since she was anxious to appeal to workers, no admission
be charged for the seats. This was agreed to, and the expenses of the meeting
were borne by the receipts from the 64 boxes taken by a group of organiza-
tions. All of the trade unions in New York City and their members were
invited to hear Miss Keller. "Union officials and representatives have been
invited to occupy the stage in honor of the blind girl who is giving her life
to the cause of the workers," the New York Call reported on January 2, 1916,
in an article bearing the headline, "Helen Keller to Defy Jingoes."
27. In the Treaty of Paris following the Spanish-American War, the United
States obtained the Philippine Islands and Guam from Spain. In addition
to these islands in the Pacific, Spain also ceded Puerto Rico to the United
States.
28. Mayor John Purroy Mitchel of New York City was a leader of the pro-
war movement.
29. These were the names of American ships sunk after the German de-
cree of February 4, 1915, declaring the waters around the British Isles a war
zone, threatening to sink all belligerent merchant ships met within that zone,
and giving warning that neutral ships might also be sunk. On May 7, 1915,
the Luisitania was sunk by a German submarine and over a thousand per-
sons drowned, among them 128 Americans. It was disclosed that four days
before the Lusitania sailed, President Wilson was warned in person by
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan that the ship had 6,000,000 rounds
of ammunition on board, besides explosives.
30. For a discussion of the Lawrence strike, see Foner, The Industrial
Workers of the World, 1905-1917, op. cit., pp. 30&-50.
31. The New York Call reprinted the interview on January 17, 1916, under
the heading: "Helen Keller, Industrialist. Famous Blind Girl Says She Finds
Party Too Slow and is Now IWW Adherent." The Socialist paper notified
its readers that it had not "verified" the interview in which "Miss Keller
criticises the Socialist party, saying that 'it is too slow' and 'is sinking into
the political bog.' "
32. When the New York Call announced a $50,000 bond issue, the bonds
Notes 125
bearing four per cent per annum interest and redeemable ten years from
the date of issue, Helen Keller immediately subscribed.
33. Organized by Alice Paul and originally known as the Congressional
Union, the National Woman's Party devoted itself to the passage of an
amendment to the Federal Constitution for woman suffrage. By 1913 women
had secured the vote in nine states, and the National Woman's Party used
their voting power to advance the cause of a Federal Amendment. National
woman suffrage became an assured fact on August 18, 1920, when the Ten-
nessee legislature adopted the 19th Amendment to the United States Con-
stitution. It had passed Congress on May 21, 1919, and the National Woman's
Party led the fight for ratification by the state legislatures.
34. In July, 1917, the New York Socialists nominated Morris Hillquit for
Mayor on a platform opposing conscription. The United States entered the
war on April 6, 1917, and conscription became law on May 18 as the draft
bill passed both houses and was signed by President Wilson. The Socialist
platform that nominated Hillquit protested against "compelling them [the
people] to fight against their will." (New York Times, July 9, 1917.) In the
election, Hillquit polled 142,178 votes, only 7,129 fewer than John Purroy
Mitchel who ran second. John F. Hylan, the Tammany candidate, was elected
Mayor.
The New York Call described Helen Keller's letter as "the great human
document that this great municipal campaign has brought forth," and ob-
served, "Though physically blind, she sees with her soul's vision the true
issues of this campaign." (November 5, 1917.)
35. Title XII of the Espionage Act prohibited sending through the mails
any materials "advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resis-
tance to any law of the United States." In effect, this was to give the Post-
master General the right to determine what matter could be mailed, a
right which Postmaster General Albert Sidney Burleson used indiscriminately
to suppress newspapers and publications which opposed America's participa-
tion in the war.
36. The Sedition Act of 1798, enacted by a Federalist Congress and signed
by President John Adams, provided for a maximum penalty of five years'
imprisonment and $5,000 fine for publicizing false or malicious statements
against the U.S. government, Congress, or the President. It was aimed at the
followers of Thomas Jefferson, and was criticized by Woodrow Wilson in his
A History of the American People.
37. On July 12, 1917, about 1,200 workmen in the Arizona copper mines,
engaged in a strike led by the IWW, were rounded up by vigilantes belong-
ing to the Citizens' Protective League and deported to New Mexico. They
were unloaded at the little desert station of Hermanas, New Mexico, aban-
doned by their guards and left to shift for themselves.
38. On July 2, 1917, one of the worst race riots in American history oc-
curred in East St. Louis, Illinois. Estimates of Negroes killed by white mobs,
as the police and soldiers stood idly by, ranged from 38 to over 100. Hun-
dreds were wounded and maimed, and over 300 Negro homes were burned.
39. The Industrial Workers of the World was founded at a convention in
Chicago which opened on June 27, 1905. Delegates represented the Western
Federation of Miners, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Labor Party, the
American Labor Union, and a number of unions affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor.
126 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
40. The strike against the Pressed Steel Car Co. in McKees Rocks, Penn-
sylvania, July 10 to September 8, 1909, resulted in a victory for the strikers
and showed that the IWW which took a leading part in the strike knew how
to organize and lead the unskilled, foreign-born workers. This was reenforced
even more by the great victory at Lawrence in 1912. The Paterson silk strike
in 1913, however, resulted in a defeat for the IWW which led the strike, and
shattered its influence in Eastern industry.
The strike of the copper miners at Calumet, Michigan, in 1913 was led by
the Western Federation of Miners and not by the IWW. The WFM had
left the IWW as early as 1907.
41. In late 1917 and early 1918, IWW leaders and members were arrested
throughout the country, ostensibly because of their opposition to the war
but more frequently because employers, threatened by the IWW organizing
their workers, saw an opportunity to use the war to destroy the militant
labor body. The press regularly reported frequent beatings and jailings of
IWW's in many parts of the country.
42. On the morning of August 1, 1917, Frank Little, a crippled IWW
organizer, was seized by vigilantes in his room in Butte, Montana, tied
behind an automobile, dragged through the streets, and hanged at the rail-
road trestle outside of town. A sign was left pinned to his clothes, reading:
"Others take notice. First and last warning. 3-77-77."
43. On November 7, 1917, vigilantes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, entered the jail
where 17 IWW's were being held, drove them to the outskirts of the city,
tied each prisoner to a tree, and lashed each victim until his back ran with
blood. Then a coat of hot tar, followed by feathers, was applied to the bleeding
back of each victim.
44. The "Ludlow Massacre" occurred in 1914 during a strike of coal miners
in Colorado against the Rockefeller-dominated Colorado Fuel and Iron Co.
Evicted from the company houses, the miners, who were members of the
United Mine Workers of America and not of the IWW, organized a tent
colony which included women and children. On April 20, 1914, the state
militia attacked the tent colony and burned the tents. Two women and
eleven children were smothered in the flames. During the same strike,
strikers were shot down and killed by Baldwin-Felts guards at Trinidad,
Colorado, and many were arrested and deported.
45. The reference is to the IWW's belief in sabotage as a weapon in the
class struggle, a tactic which was more often preached than practiced.
46. The number of IWWs on trial in Chicago was actually 113. Following
the government raids on various IWW ofiices on September 5, 1917, 166 men
were arrested. The names of all these persons had been included in the
original indictment, but 53 of the defendants were finally dismissed on lack
of evidence. This left 113 to stand trial on the general charge of conspiracy
against the war program of the United States. There were originally five
counts against the defendants, but one was thrown out before the case went
to the jury. On August 30, 1918, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty on all
counts for 97 men. Sentences ranged from 20 years in prison and $30,000
fine for William D. Haywood and 14 other defendants to less severe sentences
and fines.
Along with John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Carlton J. Hayes and others,
Helen Keller's name appeared in an advertisement in the New Republic
asking for a fair trial for the IWWs. The magazine was warned by an agent
Notes 127
of the Department of Justice not to reprint it, under threat of getting into
trouble with the law. (H. C. Peters and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War,
1917-1918, Madison, Wisconsin, 1957, p. 236.)
47. On June 29, 1918, Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party, was
indicted for violating the Espionage Act during an anti-war speech he had
delivered in Canton, Ohio, on June 16. He was found guilty after a brief
trial, and sentenced to ten years in prison. The case was appealed to the
Supreme Court which handed down its decision on March 10, 1919, uphold-
ing the jury's verdict and the sentence. The opinion was written by Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes. Debs remained in prison from April, 1919, until
December 25, 1921, when he was released by President Warren G. Harding.
The Appeal to Reason called Helen Keller's letter "one of the most beauti-
ful tributes that has been paid to Debs." (May 17, 1919.)
48. Miss Keller's letter, sent from Alabama, was read by Helen Todd to
15,000 men and women in New York's Madison Square Garden. The meeting
was held to protest the blockade of Soviet Russia.
49. On July 2, 1918, the Allied Supreme War Council decided on inter-
vention to aid Admiral Kolchak, who was in Siberia, overthrow the Soviet
government. On July 17, the US government notified the Allies that it
would land troops in Vladivostok. Kolchak's counterrevolutionary military
campaign was aided by British, French, American and Japanese troops. The
American troops remained in Siberia from mid-1918 to early 1920. British
and French intervention in behalf of General Denikin, another counter-
revolutionary leader, was especially pronounced in south Russia. Kolchak's
and Denikin's forces were finally defeated by the Red Army, but the inter-
vention against Soviet Russia resulted in the death of thousands of Russians,
most of them civilians.
50. The American Women's Emergency Committee was organized in Octo-
ber 1919, for the purpose of sending a relief ship of milk, medicine, shoes
and food to starving babies and women in Soviet Russia. When this was
halted by the US government, the committee turned its attention to the
campaign to lift the embargo against Russia. In addition to Helen Keller,
the committee was led by Mrs. Helen Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and a women's suffrage and Socialist leader, Mrs. J. A. H. Hop-
kins, Helen Todd, Lucy Branham and Mrs. Toscan Bennett.
51. Ludwig C. A. K. Martens was officially appointed on January 2, 1919, by
the Soviet government as the first "Representative of the People's Commis-
sariat for Foreign Affairs in the United States of America." He took up his
duties on March 18, 1919, and sought to establish trade and displomatic
relations with the United States. Although a significant group of American
firms wished to develop trade with Soviet Russia, the State Department
rejected all plans to promote Soviet-American trade and establish diplomatic
relations between the two countries. After frequent investigations of the
charge that he was advocating the overthrow of the US government by
force and violence, investigations conducted by the Lusk Committee in New
York and the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Martens was
ordered deported by Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson. Wilson admitted
that there was no evidence that Martens had ever personally advocated the
use of force or violence as a means of overthrowing the US government,
or that he had ordered the dissemination of any literature containing such
propaganda.
128 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
52. Francis Dana was sent by Congress as a regular accredited minister to
Russia. He stayed in St. Petersburg from August 1781, to September 1783,
but did not present his credentials to the Russian government until March
7, 1783. The Czarist government refused to recognize Dana or the United
States.
53. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held hearings on a bill
introduced by Senator Joseph I. France of Maryland which called for re-
sumption of trade with Soviet Russia. Lucy Branham and Mrs. Harriet
Stanton Blatch came to Washington to testify for the American Women's
Emergency Committee. They brought with them Helen Keller's statement.
54. Helen Keller and Art Young, the great Socialist artist and cartoonist,
led the grand march at midnight at the New Year's Eve Ball of the Rand
School of Social Science at Madison Square Garden. At the conclusion of the
march. Miss Keller delivered this address from a raised platform in the
middle of the Garden. The Rand School of Social Science in New York City
was the leading school founded by the Socialist Party. It conducted classes
in the school and through correspondence courses on the principles and
practices of socialism.
55. By the beginning of 1921 a general depression, accompanied by wide-
spread unemployment, hit the entire United States.
56. Two years before in 1920, Miss Keller had led the grand march at
the Rand School Ball at Madison Square Garden. On this occasion. New
Year's Eve 1922, this letter was read to the audience at the close of the
march, together with a letter of greetings from Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz.
Steinmetz, the "wizard of electricity," had been the Socialist and Farmer-
Labor Party candidate for State Engineer in the election of 1922.
57. A conference for Progressive political action, meeting at Cleveland in
July 1924, and attended by trade unionists. Socialists and political reformers,
invited Robert M. La Follette to run independently for President on a
Farmer-Labor ticket. La Follette accepted, and received nearly 5,000,000
votes in November, or one-sixth of the votes cast. Calvin Coolidge, the
Republican nominee, was the victorious candidate.
58. Lenin died on January 21, 1924.
/
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o
4-
THE CASE OF JOE HILL
by Philip S. Foner
Joe Hill, the famous Wobbly poet,
songwriter and organizer was executed
in Salt Lake City on November 19,
1915. Many felt that he was not guilty
of the murder he was charged with, that
he did not have a fair trial, and that
he was the victim of class persecution.
There has emerged a whole body of
literature — including novels, plays,
poetry, songs and articles in learned
journals — dealing with Joe Hill and
his case. Now, Dr. Phihp S. Foner, the
noted American labor historian, pre-
sents a fully-documented study. It is
based on exhaustive research in a wide
variety of sources, many never before
examined.
As a result of this intensive research,
it is now conclusively demonstrated
that Joe Hill was the victim of a co-
lossal frameup. The author shows how
witnesses changed their testimonies to
help the State strengthen its weak
case against Hill — a case built en-
tirely on circumstantial evidence; how
the District Attorney violated the laws
of Utah in his haste to gain a convic-
tion; how the Judge cooperated in
making a conviction a certainty; and
how the press and the authorities in
Utah created an atmosphere so hostile
to the defendant because of his con-
nections with the IWW that a fair
trial became an impossibility. He ex-
amines the refusal of the Utah Su-
preme Court to reverse the conviction,
and shows how the Court, in its desire
to send an IWW leader to his execu-
tion, actually distorted what had taken
place during the trial.
Jacobus tenBroek Libranr
What the Critics Said About
HISTORY OF THE LABC. .^,^^
IN THE UNITED STATES
101670
7
by PHILIP S. FONER
"The product of industrious research into a wide range of
primary materials, it challenges the interpretation of American
labor history set forth in the first two volumes of the pioneering
and now classic 'History of Labour in the United States' by
John R. Commons and associates, which appeared almost thirty
years ago."
— Professor Henry David, New York Times Book Review
"Since the exhaustive study of early labor history in this
country by John R. Commons and associates, most writers have
been content to rely upon their research and merely rearrange
the material. It has remained for Dr, Philip S. Foner to make a
fresh examination of the original sources, with the aid of mono-
graphic material produced by a generation of students. . . . His
work, ably written, well organized, and carefully documented,
will prove of value to all students of American labor history. . . .
He has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of
labor history."
— Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science
"In no other volume covering the entire labor movement can
one find the interweaving presented here of labor conditions
and organization, general and economic factors."
— Professor Sidney L. Jackson, New York History
Vol. I: From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American
Federation of Labor. 576 pp. 7.50
Vol. II: From the Founding of the American Federation of
Labor to the Emergence of American ImperiaHsm.
480 pp. 7.50
Vol. III. The Policies and Practices of the A. F. of L., 1900-1909.
480 pp. 7.50
Vol. IV: The Industrial Workers of the World. 608 pp. 8.50
381
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS
Park Avenue South, New York, N. Y.
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